Police Target New Street-Crime Area : Patrols: A special team will tackle crime in the western part of San Diego. The Hillcrest-North Park operation has ended.

San Diego police plan to create a special robbery and assault team for the western part of the city, similar to the one used to combat the brutal wave of attacks that earlier plagued Hillcrest and North Park, officials said Monday.

Police officials would not elaborate on the number of officers assigned to the special unit or on what strategies they will use to reduce street robberies and assaults from Point Loma to Hotel Circle.

Plans to create the new crime-fighting team were made public after an announcement that police were dismantling the North Park-Hillcrest violent crimes task force.

Since its inception Dec. 16, the team has made 36 felony arrests for crimes including robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and auto theft. It also made 50 misdemeanor arrests, said Western Division Capt. Winston Yetta, who oversaw the North Park-Hillcrest task force.

Police Chief Bob Burgreen originally assembled the team in response to a report of 50 “wilding” attacks in North Park and Hillcrest in which blacks allegedly attacked whites for no apparent reason.

Police later lowered the number of assaults to around 35 and quit using the racially charged term when it became apparent that the assaults were being committed by numerous individuals and that victims were chosen by opportunity and not by race.

Yetta said Monday that the task force had reached a dead end with leads surrounding the series of attacks. The task force investigated or reviewed nearly 150 serious crimes that took place in North Park and Hillcrest during 1991.

City Councilman John Hartley hailed efforts made by police and the North Park-Hillcrest citizen patrols. The patrols, composed of 200 citizen-volunteers, will continue to monitor their neighborhoods for the rest of the year and maybe longer.

“The operation has been a success in North Park and Hillcrest. We’ve actually taken back our streets and taken back our neighborhoods in this area,” Hartley said.

Assistant Police Chief Norm Stamper echoed Hartley’s sentiments regarding the valuable efforts made by the volunteer citizen patrols, and called it a concept the department plans to embrace throughout the city.

“Our response to community or citizen patrols historically has been very negative because of a fear of vigilantism or a fear of innocent but well-intentioned citizens getting hurt,” Stamper said. “It has changed this time around because the citizens leading these patrols have law enforcement experience, which in turn has helped the citizen volunteers.”

In addition to Monday’s decisions, Chief Burgreen in January announced plans to reassign 102 members of the force to create a “neighborhood policing” program, to specifically tackle domestic violence and narcotics deals in high-crime areas.