Latino Chief Fights Crime With Goodwill

No cop looks forward to New Year’s Eve, that most unpredictable of nights when the world feels that it has license to go wild. But what happened here that night took even a veteran lawman like Manuel Ortega by surprise.

In a bizarre and confusing drama, a gunman robbed a Bank of America branch and before fleeing told the 29 employees and customers huddled inside that a bomb would go off if they tried to leave. Shortly after, the robber killed himself at the end of a police chase, leaving officers unsure whether there really was a bomb or whether another gunman lurked in the bank.

As God-knows-what transpired among the city’s revelers, Police Chief Ortega rejiggered the night’s deployment plans with the calm that has become his trademark.

Hit with the crisis at a shift-change, Ortega dispatched the incoming night shift, sent his tired day-patrol officers right back onto the street and assigned duties to swarms of volunteering off-duty and reserve officers. He arranged for street barricades.

The 24-year police veteran put one sergeant in charge of the robbery scene and another in charge of the suicide scene. Then he took up a spot in the dispatch booth and monitored the radio traffic. Seven tense hours later, the hostages walked out of the bank unharmed, and there was no bomb to be found.

Sgt. Jay Fricke, who supervised the officers at the bank, said it is typical of Ortega that he did not rush to the scene and begin shouting orders. Here is a boss who is restrained in exerting authority, who maintains a strong, supportive presence by sheer “power of his personality,” Fricke said.

“He doesn’t use his authority to interfere with you. He stays more in the background,” Fricke said. “He lets his people make decisions. (But) he’s not going to let you fall. He’s there if you need him.”

In his job only 14 months, Ortega has impressed the people of Placentia with his warmth and his unprecedented dedication to the city’s youth. In a time when police departments can easily grow remote from the communities they serve, Ortega has emphasized accessibility, and it profoundly affects the way the community views him and how his officers do their job.

Melissa Albidrez, a lifelong resident of the modest, predominantly Latino neighborhoods of south Placentia, said Ortega had an instant, tangible effect on officers’ attitude toward the community.

“They’re really friendly now. They seem to be more caring,” she said. “Before . . . they were isolated, hiding behind their uniforms.”

Ortega’s focus on cultivating goodwill among the young can be seen on the streets of this North County city of 41,000.

Albidrez said that as she prepared dinner one night, she was “shocked” to see Ortega step from a patrol car outside her house to shoot the breeze with a few teen-agers. But another shock followed: the comments of her own 15-year-old son.

“He said, ‘Oh yeah, we met him at school, he’s really cool,’ ” Albidrez recalled. “I couldn’t believe it.”

She hears neighbors telling stories now about how an officer picked up local kids and took them for a ride in his patrol car. She sees teen-agers rushing out to the street to chat with officers.

“Their image has changed,” Albidrez said. “Kids around here are brought up to believe that cops are bad. And now even the 11- and 13-year-olds wave. They know the cops by name.”

Ortega is only the second Latino to occupy a police chief’s chair in Orange County, and the only one currently in office. He watches over a city whose Latino population has soared 67% in the last decade. And in a community where one in four residents is Latino, the familiar sound of his surname is appreciated.

“Mexican people relate to someone of their own race, they confide and believe in him more,” Rosanne Covarrubias, a Placentia resident, said. “It’s like being part of the family.”

These reports of goodwill from the community make Ortega beam. Clearly, they are what he is after.

“This has been a major focus for me,” he said in a recent interview. “I felt a strong need for interaction with the community. It’s the only way to solve any problem: drugs, gangs, anything.”

By many accounts, Ortega has a flair for communication. City Manager Robert D’Amato says he seems to keep in touch with a wide range of townspeople, from regular folks to city department heads. Ken Griffin, treasurer of the police officers’ union, praises him for an “open-door” policy that encourages the rank and file to chat with the chief.

And Ortega wants that attitude carried to the streets. Soon after coming on board in October, 1990, Ortega told his 53 officers: Stop your cars. Get out and talk to people. The instructions were well-received, he said, maybe a little encouragement was all they needed.

“Most cops want people to like them,” said Ortega, who is also a county human relations commissioner. “Maybe they put on a big facade, but they want to talk to people and be liked.”

Indeed, this is the man who, as a patrol officer in the heavily Latino El Modena section of Orange, got a reputation for never being in his car. He’s the one who, when leaving Orange, was roasted for being too squeaky-clean to roast. As police chief for two years in the tough city of Bell in Los Angeles County, Ortega was the guy who slashed excessive-force complaints against the department by 75%.

Bell City Manager John Bramble said police officers had grown isolated from the community and insensitive, lacking “clear direction” from management. When Ortega assumed the helm in 1988, he improved morale and brought the department closer to the residents, he said.

“He indicated you had to be courteous, communicative, use force when necessary, but no more than that,” Bramble said. “He re-established the department’s priorities. He showed the department there was a leader at the top.”

Comments like these seem to mildly surprise Ortega, whose raised eyebrows and shrugged shoulders seem to say: Hey, I just do what I think is right. It’s that same attitude that prompts him to spend many hours each week driving around Placentia, talking with neighbors and local merchants. It’s simple, he might say; it’s the right thing to do.

A forthright man with an easy manner, Ortega feels fortunate to have been raised in a hard-working Long Beach family, the only child of a seamstress and a cannery worker, both Mexican immigrants.

Growing up in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood, Ortega had an “Anglicized” identity, as he puts it. But inside his home, he still had a keen sense of his Latino roots. He said the Latino culture’s emphasis on lifelong ties between family and friends helps him understand how friendships among neighborhood children can in some cases turn into gang affiliations.

“The only difference between me and those kids is that I didn’t grow up in a rough environment,” Ortega said.

He got into his share of trouble, though. Arrested at 16 for stealing a car, Ortega was threatened with a year in juvenile hall, but an officer who believed in him persuaded a judge to let him off with probation. Impressed with the influence that officer had on his life, Ortega knew he wanted to do that for others.

And so it is the youngsters who hold his attention most closely. Working against the lures of gangs and drugs, Ortega is running a save-the-children campaign.

Ortega has three full-time officers--a high percentage in a town of Placentia’s size--teaching the DARE program in the schools, urging young people to resist drugs and gangs through increased self-esteem. On summer break, two of those officers hung out in public parks, playing basketball and softball with the kids, improving rapport.

Soon, officers who patrol school zones will be required to visit school officials at least twice a week, listening to their concerns and offering solutions.

All this emphasis on children is an investment in the future, Ortega says. He wants to keep them off drugs, out of gangs, and give them faith in themselves.

And in the meantime, he tries to get the gangs under control. To cope with the simmering problem, Ortega established a citizens’ advisory committee on drugs and gangs, including Covarrubias and Albidrez among its members.

He also set up the Police Department’s first gang unit, with two full-time officers who know the turf, the tattoos, the nicknames, the intricate histories of bad blood. They have their hands full.

While Placentia boasted a lower overall crime rate in 1991 than in 1990, it also witnessed a rise in gang violence, said gang-detail investigator John Armstrong.

Both of the city’s homicides were gang-related, and people were wounded in 35 drive-by shootings. Of the 400 gang members and associates identified by police, most are based in south Placentia and are increasingly violent, Armstrong said.

But even as he wages war on gangs, Ortega seems to put little faith in suppression tactics.

“Anybody that tells you the purpose of a gang detail is to eliminate gangs is either very naive or they have the secret of the ages,” Ortega said. “You won’t eliminate gangs. The best we can do is monitor them and stay one step ahead to keep a lid on the violence, until our programs (with kids) take effect.”

“Are we writing off some kids?” Ortega asks, wistfully. “Maybe. But we can’t do it all. We have to devote as much to prevention as to suppression. We have to concentrate on these children.”