LAPD Enlists Civilians for Stakeout, Videotape Duty

One year after the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney G. King embarrassed Los Angeles police, the department is enlisting San Fernando Valley residents to help conduct stakeouts by videotaping suspected criminal activity.

The video volunteers, who will be unarmed but will be in radio contact with officers, will sit in unmarked patrol cars, in buildings and on rooftops, watching with binoculars and video cameras in high-crime areas.

“It’s the purest form of community policing,” said Capt. Vance Proctor, commander of the Devonshire Division, who organized the program and held its first meeting for volunteers Thursday night.

Under the community surveillance program, about 50 volunteers will be trained to help police conduct stakeouts.

Initially, the volunteers will be used mainly to watch areas plagued by graffiti, vandalism and burglary. But as they gain experience, police will use them in criminal stakeouts and to watch areas known for high-volume drug sales, Proctor said.

“I support the police and I want them to do a good job,” said a 35-year-old woman who attended the meeting. “I think this will bring out the best in them. . . . We’re going to watch them, too,” she said of the police.

Volunteers will receive training in police surveillance techniques, radio procedures and how to testify in court, Proctor said. The department will not provide cameras, but will train participants who bring their own. The volunteers will not be involved in arrests or pursuits, and must sign a waiver freeing the city of liability if they are harmed.

“They’ll be our eyes and ears--that’s it,” Proctor said.

The use of citizens with cameras, a brainchild of Devonshire officers, is not designed as a pilot program for the Los Angeles Police Department, but Proctor said the idea could catch on in other divisions.

“I don’t think anyone is doing this in the city, but if it works we hope it catches on,” Proctor said.

Two factors brought the program into being: community interest and a projected staff shortage, Proctor said. A new community-based policing program in the San Fernando Valley has expanded and invigorated neighborhood watch groups, although Proctor predicts that expected budget cuts will leave the division understaffed until 1994.

The program is based loosely on the idea of Hamwatch, a group of ham radio enthusiasts who sometimes support police surveillance activities. Hamwatch, formed about 10 years ago in West Los Angeles, has spread throughout the city.

But Hamwatch usually involves only five to 10 volunteers at a time, Proctor said, and “we’re doing it full bore.”

“We have a goal this year of having 50 active members, so that at any one time, we could get together a group of 10 to conduct a surveillance any time during the day or night.”

The volunteers, who will receive about five hours of training over the next two weeks, will be contacted from one to three days before a stakeout. The volunteers will be given the time, place and estimated length of the stakeout and can decline to participate for any reason, Capt. Ken Small said.

Volunteers will travel to and from the stakeout in police vehicles.

“You’re volunteers. You’re giving your own time,” Small told the group of 50 volunteers assembled in the Devonshire Division’s roll call room. “We appreciate any time you can give.”

Members of the group, which included about 20 women, were mainly veterans of neighborhood watch groups, ranging in age from a few in their 30s to many in their 50s and 60s. Most were from upper-income areas of Porter Ranch and Granada Hills who have been galvanized to act by two mysterious slayings in recent months.

The Times was allowed to cover the event on the condition that no photographs be taken and no participant be identified in print to maintain their anonymity.

Several participants cited the King incident as spurring them to help police do a better job. Other volunteers said they were nervous about conducting surveillance in tough areas.

Volunteers must sign a waiver exempting the Police Department from liability in case of injury, said Sgt. Bill Flores, who is helping oversee the program. Flores said a Hamwatch volunteer used his own vehicle to pursue a suspect several years ago and became involved in an accident.

“We’re not going to let anything like that happen,” Flores told the volunteers. “Our No. 1 priority is your safety.”

But the waiver form made several people in the audience nervous.

“This is sending the wrong message,” said one man. “Why do you want us to sign a release if there’s no chance we’ll get hurt?”

A spokesman for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had no comment, saying he was unfamiliar with the program. A San Fernando Valley crime expert responded cautiously.

“If it’s like Hamwatch, it’s a great idea,” said Alfred Himelson, a professor of sociology and criminology at Cal State Northridge. “Los Angeles is one of the most underpoliced cities in the United States.”

Himelson, a ham radio enthusiast, said the program could work as long as police officers kept a tight rein on volunteers. But he said there could be a danger in a “vigilante group” of citizens loosely affiliated with police.

“It could get out of hand,” he said, “but only if the department lets it.”