Tense Times at Housing Project : Trust Slowly Built by Police Has Eroded, but a Bid Is Being Made to Mend Relations

A little boy, about 5 years old, rushes toward Los Angeles Police Officer Michael Lockett and lets loose with a barrage of imaginary bullets from his toy machine gun.

“You shot my homie! You shot my homie!” the child shouts with laughter as he runs away, disappearing into the maze of pale-blue cinder-block apartment buildings of the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts.

The eerie encounter did not seem to faze Lockett, who for years has worked a special detail assigned to the project. Since the fatal police shooting of Henry Peco--gunned down after he allegedly opened fire on officers with an AK-47 rifle--Lockett and others spend their days at the project being cursed at and targeted by hurtling bottles.

The chilling sight of Peco’s bullet-riddled body lying in a courtyard last November and a subsequent police sweep have ignited a new wave of animosity toward police, a palpable tension that reverberates through the project each time a black-and-white cruises through or officers make their rounds.

Since the shooting, a group of tenant activists called the Henry Peco Justice Committee has questioned police attitudes and tactics. They complain that cops “talk down” to them, think all young black men in the project are gang members and humiliate tenants during frequent “spread-eagle” searches.

But other tenants and LAPD commanders say the aggressive anti-police campaign has only served to inflame tensions, shattering three painstaking years of relationship-building that a corps of officers had quietly achieved. Left behind are remnants of mutual trust developed during an early experiment in community-based policing.

“Before the shooting I felt like we were riding the elevator to the top floor. Things were coming together,” said Lockett, who in 1989 was assigned exclusively to the project. “Then overnight, all of a sudden, we sunk. We’re back on the bottom floor.”

Although committee members say Peco was unarmed and shot without provocation, police officials maintain that officers fired at him in self-defense.

The FBI has launched an investigation into the shooting for potential civil rights violations and a U. S. Justice Department mediator has been dispatched to the project, on Imperial Highway west of Lynwood, to attempt to ease tensions.

In an atmosphere also charged by intense tenant fear of gang members, Lockett and four other officers are still working the project, attempting to mend relations nearly severed by ongoing charges of police abuse.

They have scored small victories: a handshake, a hello, a quick wave. A few residents even walk out to greet patrolling officers, offering words of encouragement. One small group has met privately with police to express support.

Even members of the Henry Peco Justice Committee point to these senior lead officers as examples of “good police,” officers who know the people in the community and talk to them with respect.

“Lockett is our friend,” said Cynthia Mendenhall, acting president of the tenant advisory council, who has also been involved in the Henry Peco Justice Committee.

Nonetheless, members of the committee called for an outright ban against LAPD officers in the project, although they never pursued legal steps to put it into effect.

Word of the demand, however, created a chilling effect on many tenants, heightening fears of being seen with officers and fueling a free-for-all mentality among the criminals, according to police.

“In the charged atmosphere, people are uncomfortable. They are reluctant to get involved,” said Capt. David Gascon, commanding officer of the Southeast Division. “Just imagine the pressure these people feel from others who do not want us there.”

Officer Michael Carodine said “gang members, criminals, thugs are hanging under the veil of Henry Peco. It is permissible to do whatever you desire.”

Police say tenants are beleaguered by crime at the project. In January, crimes in the six-square-block project included a kidnap-rape, 13 robberies, 13 burglaries, 10 assaults with deadly weapons, auto thefts, five beatings, one child molestation and one report of shots fired into an apartment.

Barbara Kennedy, who runs a small employment training office at the project, said that many women tenants have come to her saying they are afraid to call police for fear of gang retribution.

Crime tips have virtually dried up since the shooting, police said. Many tenants now refuse to be seen talking to police--apparently for good reason. In the months since Henry Peco was killed, one woman had a cherry bomb thrown through her window after she reported a crime. A family that reported drug dealing near their apartment soon afterward found their car windows smashed.

Officers on foot constantly look behind their backs, planning what path to take through the project they call “the development.”

“LAPD KILLA” is scrawled on one wall. Invoking the police radio code for murder, “Death to LAPD 187,” is painted on another door. The officers have been ordered to patrol in groups of four--instead of the typical two-person teams--because of death threats.

“Hey, what’s up?” Lockett asks one man.

“Murder,” he answers.

As the police officers pass a group of young men, one of them yells “Hey!” When the officers look, he thrusts his middle finger into the air.

When Lockett looks into the open door of one unit, a woman shouts, “Don’t you look in my door,” and slams it shut.

Half a block away, officers are greeted with smiles, waves, even hugs from residents they call “the good people.”

‘We love you, don’t you leave us now,” says one woman, embracing Lockett in the middle of a courtyard.

Longtime tenant Flora Fountain, 35, waves down Lockett to chat about her attempt to regain custody of her daughter.

“If it weren’t for the police, people would be getting killed around here,” Fountain says. “If someone is breaking into my house I’m going to call the police. We’ve got to live, too.”

Darlene Blackburn, 34, is a mother of two teen-age boys. She approaches and asks for Lockett’s help. Her son, she says, was arrested in a case of mistaken identity during a mall robbery and she wants Lockett to call police to attest to his good character.

Blackburn, who has lived at Imperial Courts for 17 years, says tenants “need police over here. . . . I’m all for the police as long as they don’t come over here harassing.”

The issue of police harassment and attitudes is the pervasive dividing issue at Imperial.

Perry Crouch, co-chairman of the justice committee, said the Peco shooting galvanized tenants who have long been angered by what they view as degrading police tactics and disrespectful attitudes.

From the tenants’ perspective, Crouch said, young black men standing around are frequently “jacked up” for no apparent reason. Police force them to stand spread-eagled against a wall to be frisked, or order them onto the ground during questioning.

“Why do they have to throw us to the ground? It’s horrible the way they disrespect you in front of your kids,” Crouch said. “We are talking about the way they view us. They view us as something lower than, less than. If there are three or four brothers minding their own business they will make them lay on the ground. . . . They think every person is gang-banger.”

Crouch said tenants feel that police have bad attitudes and patrol “like they are mad because they have to come over here.”

“We want to be treated like those white people in Beverly Hills,” Crouch said.

But according to Capt. John Trundle, commander of the division’s patrol officers, it’s not that simple.

“Probably in Beverly Hills people don’t go out with AK-47s and start shooting in their neighborhood,” Trundle said. “But they do it here and we have to address it.”

If the questioning and frisking are handled in accordance with police policies, it “shouldn’t be offensive from my perspective.

“We owe it to the good people to try and weed out the predators, the vicious criminals,” Trundle said.

Crouch and other members of the justice committee have called for a series of meetings with top officials to address complaints.

“I think things will get better when we sit down and hash things out,” Crouch said. “We don’t want our civil and constitutional rights violated. . . . We are talking about people who are sensitive, people who know what is going on.”

The Imperial foot cops bristle at being labeled good cops while others who patrol the project are viewed as bad cops.

“They like me because I’m not out there hookin’ and bookin,’ ” said Lockett. “I don’t feel good about it. It makes me feel like some kind of social worker.”

Police are skeptical about the motives of the justice committee. Street cops refer to the $1.4 million in claims recently filed against the city for alleged civil rights violations during a New Year’s sweep as the “LAPD lottery--sue the city.”

Gascon called their allegations of illegal searches, verbal abuse and emotional distress “trumped up, phony allegations and claims.”

But despite the tensions, Lockett’s goal is simple:

“If I can just walk through the project and residents feel free to talk to me, that’s my job.”