Troops in the Trenches : Officers Fighting Crime War Are Too Busy to Take Much Notice of the Impending Change in Command

With police officers clustered right outside his holding cell, the bare-chested shoplifting suspect has suddenly figured out how to get their attention: He drops his pants.

“Put your clothes on!” an officer shouts to him.

“I want to see a doctor!” the suspect hollers back. Why? “My mental problems.”

Officers scramble to tape butcher paper over the cell window.

As a changing of the guard unfolds Thursday in the vast Los Angeles Police Department, front-line cops here in the gritty, inner-city Southeast Division are finding little time to reflect on the choice of Philadelphia’s Willie L. Williams as the man who will be their chief, succeeding Daryl F. Gates.

Here, in the kind of high-volume, understaffed precinct where Williams is expected to face his most difficult leadership challenge, too much hard, minute-to-minute police work is going on. Too many reports are due. Too many phones are ringing.

Williams’ arrival in Los Angeles is not even mentioned at the 6:45 a.m. roll call, a meeting dominated by talk about crowd control. By coincidence, Williams is hitting town just as Southeast Division and others are gearing up for several potentially violent events.

One is the pending resolution of the Rodney G. King police brutality trial, which could cause repercussions in the inner city if the LAPD officers are acquitted. Another is Easter, when abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces are expected to clash in protests. Still another is a May demonstration planned by militant members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group especially active in Rampart Division, a few miles away.

Sgt. Ron Moen, who labels the Communist group the greatest threat to the community, runs through a quick drill on holding ranks and dealing with unruly crowds. He calls on the street cops for information on gun stores and pawnshops that sell firearms. “We need intelligence,” Moen tells the day-watch troops. “Keep your ears to the ground.”

Later, the omission of Williams’ selection is dismissed with a shrug. The agenda was heavy, and besides, everyone already knew. “It’s basically going to be business as usual for the officer in the street for a long time,” Moen says.

Though not the city’s highest-crime area, Southeast usually ranks near the top. Last year, 92 people were killed in its 10 square miles. And based on statistics so far this year, it looks as if that total will be exceeded.

Spanning Watts and portions of South-Central Los Angeles and Harbor Gateway, Southeast is a gang- and drug-ridden area under siege. It is the kind of place, according to officers, that Williams will have to see and grasp--and eventually deal with--if he is to effectively command the 8,300-member police force.

Among officers here, the unspoken attitude is that Williams, the outsider, will have to learn from them, and not the other way around.

“It’s a big thing,” Sgt. Lon Salzman, the division’s assistant watch commander, says of Williams’ surprise selection. “But there’s so much work to be done down here . . . we just go on and do what we’ve got to do.”

By 8 a.m., many of the nearly 60 day-watch officers are deployed, typically in two-man cars that roll through the division’s 207 linear miles of streets. Already, Salzman’s computer shows there have been 1,231 incidents handled citywide by LAPD officers on this morning. In less than an hour, that total will climb to 1,398.

“Some cars, in an hour, may not have five minutes of free time,” Salzman says between phone calls and reports issuing from a portable radio. The command room where he works is a functional place with a scuffed tile floor, patched in several places, a couple of large desks, video monitors showing portions of the station house and handcuffs hanging from various doorknobs. “They’re busy all the time. It all comes down to the fact that we just don’t have enough people.”

As Salzman speaks, one of his cars is at a nearby bakery where a drunk has been swearing at customers. A minute later, another car has picked up a shoplifter. The next radio report blares something about a knife battle.

“They’re fighting already,” Salzman says.

The onslaught of crime has crippled the division’s ability to handle noisy neighbors, domestic disputes and other everyday complaints, Salzman says. Street cops are “tied to the radio,” unable to do much of anything in the way of crime deterrence, he says. “They’re beating themselves to death.”

The division’s total force of 264 sworn officers includes street cops, detectives and supervisors, and the work goes on around the clock. On typical days, like this one, the precinct sends out six or seven cars on regular patrol, three or four cars short of what is needed, Salzman says.

Other cars are assigned to special problems in the precinct--a roving “Z” car to concentrate on Figueroa Street, a notorious area for narcotics, prostitution and burglary; a few “J” cars to deal with juveniles, including abuse victims; a few “mobile foot-patrol” units to concentrate on three troublesome housing projects.

The shoplifting suspect is brought into the station a short while after she is picked up. The 29-year-old woman tells police that she is homeless, HIV-infected and receiving rehabilitation for a cocaine habit. She is accused of stealing a few bottles of aspirin, which is often passed off on the street as cocaine.

After she is led in handcuffs to a holding cell, Officer Joe Onorato asks her about the aspirin. “How much can that sell for?”

“About half-price,” she says, indicating that she would sell the bottles at lower-than-retail rates to a buyer who, in turn, would package it as cocaine. But, she adds, “This is my first time.”

Onorato is skeptical. He retreats to a computer report room to run a check on her driver’s license. Prior arrests could mean the suspect is charged with a felony. Onorato will have to search for possible aliases, if he can find them. “I’ve had guys who have had as many as 36 a.k.a.’s,” he says. “You’ve got to sit here and run all those names.”

In this case, the woman’s claim appears to check out--no priors show up--but her HIV infection presents its own problems. Since she’s homeless, she’ll have to stay in jail, but where?

Phone calls are made. She is rejected by an LAPD women’s jail in Van Nuys because the facility has no AZT, a medication the woman will need. Eventually, arrangements are made to place her at Los Angeles County’s Sybil Brand Institute, a women’s jail downtown.

By now, though, other matters await attention. A 33-year-old shoplifting suspect has been brought in. Standing shirtless in his own holding cell, he glares menacingly before starting to disrobe. The suspect is accused of stealing two bottles of baby lotion and a bottle of baby powder, but he yells denials from behind the locked door. Naked, demanding to see a doctor, he prompts suspicions of drug abuse.

“He’s starting to sweat a lot--he’s burning up,” Onorato says. “He might have some PCP in him.”

Dealing with him takes time. Eventually, after the ID checks out, he is persuaded to dress, and he gets his wish: He’ll go to the doctor, the doctor at the new jail downtown. He marches out peacefully in cuffs.

For a while, the precinct settles down, but never for long. A county marshal soon arrives with a man arrested on traffic warrants, including a charge of driving under the influence. The man seems in a jovial mood.

“Sir, are you under the influence of drugs?” Moen demands.

“I’m as sober as the judge,” he answers.

A 5-year-old girl comes in with J-car Officer Patricia Belz. The story on the girl, Cory, is that her father abandoned her nine days ago, leaving her with a drug-using girlfriend, who also neglected her. Cory was discovered alone at home by her adult sister, who reported the case to police.

Proudly clutching a shiny gold-colored box containing a dollar bill, Cory is happy now, although she cried when officers first took her away. Belz asks if she is hungry, if she wants to go to McDonald’s.

Cory likes that idea, but it is nixed by a telephone tip: Her father is livid and on his way to the station “to get his daughter back.”

Moments later, Belz is spreading the word in the watch room: “You might be prepared for a little scene in the lobby.”

While the confrontation looms, Belz takes Cory upstairs for an ice cream--and a further interview. When they return, Belz reports that Cory was often whipped by the father, who sometimes rubbed grease between her legs.

“Put down possible sexual abuse,” Officer Harry Lee says.

A decision is made to arrest the father, if he arrives, on child-endangerment charges. Cory, unfortunately, will probably have to go to a foster home.

But as the day drags on, Cory’s father does not arrive. Too bad, Belz says. “I wanted to arrest him.”

Cory, doodling on a piece of paper, another child of the inner city, glances up and smartly offers her own advice on her dad: “Arrest him.”