Estimates of Riot-Related Arrests Deflated : Courts: Prosecutors now say fewer than 10,000 bookings resulted. But nobody seems sure how the number was once put at 19,000.

For two weeks, the missing bodies have been a standing joke in the Los Angeles criminal justice system.

“You found ‘em yet?” one prosecutor asks another. Or, “How many thousands are you waiting for?”

As soon as the initial turmoil of the riots calmed, and as arrest statistics continued to climb--from 6,000 to 12,000 to nearly 19,000, at latest count--it was clear that the numbers were way out of line.

Prosecutors assigned to handle the bulk of riot cases could account for only a third of them. By this week, most had concluded that the actual number of arrestees was just half the 18,807 figure being released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

On Wednesday, sheriff’s officials joined the revisionists, acknowledging that the true number of riot arrests was almost certainly under 10,000.

Three sheriff’s representatives attending a countywide meeting of court and law enforcement officials said the arrest totals that had been announced hourly by their Emergency Operations Center had been “misinterpreted.”

In fact, they said, the much-quoted figures represented the total of booking numbers reserved by police agencies around the county in anticipation of mass arrests. But some of those booking numbers may not have been immediately used. And those that were used represented more than riot suspects--all other arrestees were lumped in as well.

“From the get-go, there was no way to separate out the riot arrests,” said Capt. Tom Hehir. “But somebody took that figure and decided it was riot-related.”

The downgrading of arrest totals was the second recent revision of riot statistics. Last week, fire officials concluded that there had been 623 structures set ablaze in the city of Los Angeles. They previously had reported that they responded to 5,537 structure fires between April 29 and May 5, but a study found that many responses were actually multiple 911 calls about the same fires.

As the custodian for many of those arrested throughout Los Angeles County, the Sheriff’s Department took on the job of answering numerous requests for statistics that might show the scope of the rioting.

Capt. Jerry Skaggs, who heads the central inmate reception center, said the only way to calculate arrest totals in the frantic first days was to add up the masses of booking numbers being requested from the Sheriff’s Department by police agencies around the county. Such numbers are used to track suspects through the jails and courts.

But while most police departments were, in fact, devoting overtime effort to the riots, some of the booking numbers went to areas not affected by the unrest. So the total was “certainly not reflective of the number arrested for the riots,” Skaggs said.

Yet many in the media and the courts interpreted the number just that way.

The rising totals bewildered city and county prosecutors, who were being counted on to file criminal charges against those arrested.

“We thought, my god, we’re going to get 8,000 felonies,” Assistant Dist. Atty. R. Dan Murphy told the Wednesday meeting of the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, which includes leaders of local judiciary, law enforcement and related agencies.

County officials who handle juvenile offenders similarly expected hordes of new bodies and made room in their detention facilities by transferring some youths to state institutions. “As it turns out, at the end of three days of rioting we had less kids in the (juvenile) halls than when we started,” said Chief Probation Officer Barry J. Nidorf.

Sheriff’s officials said they still do not have accurate riot arrest figures, but they did release new, detailed statistics for the first week of the unrest, showing there were 12,545 arrests countywide--but still with an undetermined number of them for “business as usual.”

More than two-thirds of the arrestees were younger than 30. Arrests of Latinos outnumbered those of blacks by 5,669 to 5,141.

Law enforcement officials said the best indication of how many were riot-related can be found in the charges being brought by prosecutors around the county:

* The district attorney’s office has filed felony charges against 2,708 suspects--most for burglary or possession of stolen property--and misdemeanors against 604 others.

* The city attorney has filed 2,680 misdemeanors, most for curfew violations, and is expecting to receive up to 400 more cases in which defendants were released soon after arrest and ordered to report to court later.

* Additional misdemeanor charges have been brought by city prosecutors in other communities around the county, with Long Beach heading the list with 410 such filings. Torrance city prosecutors have charged 67 riot defendants on their own. And in Pasadena, the city prosecutors expect to bring 50 misdemeanor charges stemming from the riots.

There also are nooks and crannies of the criminal justice system where other arrestees have been diverted without charges being filed. The federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, for instance, reported that it immediately took custody of 318 riot defendants brought to police deployment sites. And county probation officials will review the cases of perhaps several hundred juvenile curfew violators to see which ones can be disposed of without prosecution.

But even after adding all those figures, it has long been clear to many judges, prosecutors and police officials that there was a vast gap between actual riot cases and the arrest totals being quoted daily.

“Everybody’s got a pet theory. It’s like the Kennedy assassination,” said John F. Lynch, the coordinator of riot prosecutions for the district attorney’s office.

“The one that has the most plausibility is that there were a lot of arrests in parts of the county that were (not) riot-related. . . . They just looked at the booking numbers that were pulled and assumed they were riot-related.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Skaggs has given up playing the numbers game. “Everybody is trying to come up with a number . . . something more realistic,” he said. “I haven’t got the slightest idea.”

Arrests During the Riot Week

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reports that there were 12,545 arrests countywide between 6 p.m. April 29 and 5 a.m. May 5--the period of civil unrest. Most of the arrests were believed to be riot-related, but sheriff’s officials now acknowledge that not all of them were. “Some of these arrests were business as usual,” and had nothing to do with the mass looting or curfew violations, a spokesman said. MAKING THE ARRESTS

Agency Number Percent LAPD 5,625 44.8% Sheriff’s Dept. 3,230 25.7% Long Beach 1,050 8.4% Compton 368 2.9% Inglewood 188 1.5% Pasadena 186 1.5% Huntington Pk 169 1.4% All others 1,729 13.8% TOTAL 12,545 100%

RACIAL AND ETHNIC BREAKDOWN

Number Percent Latino 5,669 45.2% Black 5,141 41.0% Anglo 1,447 11.5% Others 288 2.3%

THE ARRESTS BY AGE

Age Group Number Percent 17 and under 1,310 10.4% 18 to 20 2,108 16.8% 21 to 24* 2,554 20.4% 25 to 29** 2,459 19.6% 30 to 34 1,821 14.5% 35 to 39 1,180 9.4% 40 to 44 627 5.0% 45 to 49 258 2.1% 50 and over 228 1.8%

ARRESTS BY SEX

Number Percent Males 10,859 86.6% Females 1,686 13.4%

NOTE: * 47.6% were under 25 ** 67.2% were under 30 SOURCE: L.A. County Sheriff’s Department