Some Nights, the Action Was Hot and Steamy : Computers: Officers made dates and even broke up with girlfriends over their car terminals. Few communications were virulently racist or sexist.

Two Hawthorne police officers did not need the bad guys on this Friday morning to provide excitement. They had their own action going, hot and heavy.

A patrolman used his squad car computer to boast to a female officer: “I’m desirous. I’m sensuous. I’m delectable. I’m V. I. R. I. L. E.”

On patrol in her own squad car, the policewoman responded: “I wanted to tell you something hot and steamy, but I didn’t want you to crash.” And later: “I just want you so bad. I wish you could stop by my house sometime.”

The two Hawthorne crime fighters agreed, instead, to a rendezvous in the parking structure of a local mall.

It’s impossible now to tell if the officers actually got together that day, or whether their extended, sometimes lewd, computer tete-a-tete was merely a joke.

But those messages, and more than 40,000 others obtained by The Times, reveal that Hawthorne police officers sometimes were distracted from police work by personal matters as diverse as planning a bowling date and finding a good tax preparer. Their favorite topics: eating, romance and leisure time.

Hawthorne’s messages, on computer printouts that filled two boxes, were more benign than the virulent racist or sexist dispatches attributed to Los Angeles Police Department officers last year. Those messages, revealed in the wake of the beating of motorist Rodney King, led the commission reviewing the LAPD to find that the department tolerated racism, sexism and brutality.

Still, Hawthorne Police Chief Steve Port conceded that his own department’s messages are embarrassing because of the “amazing amount of personal communication.” But Port blamed a minority of officers for misusing the machines, which were supposed to be used for dispatching patrol cars, keeping records of calls and tapping into law enforcement databases.

Port said police work did not suffer markedly because of improper computer messaging. To ensure efficiency, however, Hawthorne and three other South Bay police departments recently banned most of the automated dispatches.

Researchers have found that it is not unusual for employees to send personal communications on their computers at work.

“It feels like a very private and very personal medium to people who become familiar with it,” said M. Lynne Markus, a professor in the information science department at the Claremont Graduate School. “They are often not aware their remarks can be saved and broadcast to a large number of people.”

Greg Chidley, president of the Hawthorne Police Officers Assn., said in a written statement that it is unfair to publish officers’ personal communications, thus holding them to a higher standard than others. “Our officers believe that the discussion of matters of a personal nature” via police computers “does not constitute a dereliction of their duties,” Chidley wrote.

The records obtained by The Times, covering February, 1991, show that officers used their computers as an intimate lifeline to their colleagues, dispatchers and police in other cities. In dispatches from “The Thorne,” as some called it, officers coped with a world where boredom and anxiety strangely mingled.

An alert for help after the collision of two planes at Los Angeles International Airport, for example, was followed by messages telling officers to ignore the billowing smoke coming from a Hawthorne home--a woman was just roasting a pig.

At times, the mobile digital terminals became a vehicle for venting frustration about the job and disillusionment with the community.

One officer told of responding to a call and finding a mentally disturbed young woman, only to be jumped by the woman’s cousin when he tried to take her to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

“No one understands,” the officer messaged to another, “that if we let her go and she kills herself, or while she’s in my custody, jams those pills she maybe hid in her clothing. . . . They would be all over me (with criticism) again. It is really thankless sometimes.”

On another occasion, an officer complained to a dispatcher: “The idiots on the last 415 (disturbance) call ticked me off. The first words out of their mouth (sic) was you are telling us to be quiet because we are black. I get so tired of hearing that cop-out.”

Port said that he doubted the latter message was intended to be offensive. “When you are trying to do your job and someone gets in your face and says those kinds of things, it can be a frustration,” he said.

Such racial comments were minimal among the Hawthorne officers, a mostly white force that patrols a city that is mostly black and Latino. At most, officers tended to mimic black English with such comments as “What up cuzz” and “Who you kick with.”

Hawthorne police administrators said they believe most of the messages were either sent by black officers or by whites who meant no harm but merely parroted what they heard on the street.

Other messages indicated that officers sometimes approached their jobs in an aggressive frame of mind.

Officers said several times they were going into “Rambo” mode, and one messaged that he was getting ready for duty by “sharpening my teeth with a file.”

On one occasion, just before midnight, an El Segundo officer working with a police dog told a Hawthorne patrolman: “Try and stir some crime this way. My dog needs a bite.”

Chief Frank Meehan of El Segundo said the canine officer has been “chewed out” for sending the message, which was meant as a joke.

The most extended discussion about the use of force was offered by a Hawthorne officer over several hours early one morning.

“Hey, I had a guy tell me I violated his rights tonight and that I don’t know how to do my job the right way,” the officer typed to an employee at the dispatch center. “We had a counsel (sic) session and he is in jail.”

The employee, a complaint clerk, answered: “I bet he wishes he had kept his mouth shut, huh????????”

Forty minutes later, the same officer messaged the clerk again: “I just got in a fight and hurt my hand.” And then 20 minutes later, he added: “The (sergeant) just told me my guy has to go to the hospital.”

Near the end of the morning, he told a Manhattan Beach patrolman: “I think I broke my hand on a guy’s face tonight.”

Again, Hawthorne administrators said they have investigated the messages and that they do not indicate any misconduct on the part of the officer. In “the fight,” they said, the policeman actually was one of many who helped subdue an unruly suspect. It was on a separate call, they added, that another Hawthorne resident had a seizure and needed medical attention.

They said the officer was just “trying to be cool” or “macho” by taking the aggressive stance.

Police officials said the messages are difficult to interpret if they are not put in some context.

On Valentine’s Day, 1991, for example, a Gardena officer sent a computer message to a Hawthorne colleague, saying: “We booked a vendor selling roses. Well, needless to say, (officers) are taking them home. Wifes (sic) are going to be happy.”

Gardena Police Chief Richard Propster said he believes the message was a gag. Vendors are sometimes cited and their wares confiscated if they do not have city permits, Propster said. But officers would be severely punished for converting the contraband to their own use, he said.

Some messages seemed emotionally absorbing. One series, for example, seemed to involve two Hawthorne officers putting an end to a relationship.

“If you are dissatisfied, I think we should end it right now,” a male officer wrote.

“Did you just end it? . . . Over the MDT,” responded his apparently incredulous co-worker.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “Yes.”

In another case, a Hawthorne patrolman repeatedly messaged a cohort to drive a few blocks outside the city, to El Segundo, to observe the “babes” outside a local gym.

“I’ll pass this time,” the other officer responded. “Someone has to stay in the city and handle the calls, you know.”