L.A. Police Force Too Small to Do Job Needed, Barr Says

Los Angeles political leaders must recognize they have to spend more money building a larger police force if they are to have the kind of “community policing” needed to cope with urban violence, Atty. Gen. William P. Barr said Monday.

The small size of the Los Angeles Police Department combined with the influence of street gangs over community life “added to the combustibility” that exploded in the Los Angeles riots in the hours after the verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, Barr said in an interview.

In his first detailed public comments analyzing the riots, Barr also said preliminary indications are that gang members were heavily involved in “the initial incidents of violence and the spreading of the violence.” But he added that he is “not suggesting at this point that that means it was planned in advance.”

Barr, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, said Los Angeles’ tradition of “response policing” is no longer adequate because it focuses on responding to complaints or crimes without enough attention to building a close relationship with communities.

Instead, he said, Los Angeles needs to follow the approach of such cities as New York, Philadelphia and Richmond, Va., where response policing is combined with an effort to reach out to build bridges of trust within minority communities and high-crime areas.

“We believe law enforcement has to have a close relationship with the community to provide adequate protection and effective law enforcement,” Barr said. “That requires having sufficient manpower on the force to provide that kind of intensive community policing that we’re talking about.

“I think that the political leaders of the community are going to have to recognize that this kind of policing does require greater investment.”

Los Angeles has “a very small police force, given the size of the city,” he added. “It may have been difficult for that force to respond adequately in the initial hours of the riots.”

The Los Angeles Police Department began a preliminary community policing effort last year, but concerns have been raised by those who believe that the LAPD does not have enough officers to respond to crime and develop meaningful community policing. Los Angeles has one officer for every 416 residents, compared to New York’s 273, Philadelphia’s 238, and Richmond’s 314.

On the subject of gang involvement in the riots, Barr said it will take many months before investigators determine “whether there were conspiracies or orchestration going on. . . . And I’m not suggesting orchestration of the whole riot--just parts of what was happening. Whether, for example, there were campaigns to engage in arson, planning of what the targets would be.”

Barr declined to say how much time will be needed to complete the federal civil rights investigation into the police beating of King, but said he expects it will be completed faster than the riot inquiry.

“If we decide to go forward with indictments, then we want to be sure we have built a strong case that will prevail in court,” he said. “Any time we’re taking now would be necessary to developing such a case. The timetable shifts as we learn more about the case, so I don’t want to speculate about how long it will take.”

Although “unique circumstances” combined to erupt into the Los Angeles riots, Barr said he views problems in the inner cities as nationwide.

“There is in fact frustration and in some segments of our population a certain hopelessness over circumstances. I think there was anger and frustration over the verdict in the Rodney King incident that certainly wasn’t limited to Los Angeles.”

He is not, however, predicting similar incidents of urban unrest throughout the nation.

“I think a lot of people were angry and frustrated by the verdict,” Barr said, “but they found peaceful ways of expressing it. I think the violence was largely the product of the criminal element that was taking advantage of the situation.”

On the role of illegal immigrants in the rioting, Barr noted that they accounted for one-third of those initially arrested, but that the rate dropped substantially as arrests proceeded.

“It could be that once it became clear that people who were looting were being arrested, that people who were not lawfully in the United States made themselves scarce.

“I think there is a significant problem of illegal aliens in the Los Angeles area, and I think this was a manifestation of the scope of the problem.”