Threats Aimed at L.A. Police Raise Anxiety

Anger still smolders in post-riot, racially tense Los Angeles, and street cops feel the singe during roll call. On one recent day, they heard the threat that for every gangbanger that gets killed, two police officers would die. Another tip was more specific: Snipers would be hiding out at a particular intersection, waiting for white cops to happen by.

Out on the street, they literally read the handwriting on the wall: “Police Killa,” “F--- the LAPD,” or “LAPD 187”--a reference to the Penal Code for homicide.

Among police, the trepidation transcends rank or race. The feeling is that now, more than ever, the badge is a target.

“You’ve got to watch your back more,” said Everette Lennon, 28, a black officer in Wilshire Division. “Now you look at anything as a potential setup. . . . When you hear random gunfire, you’re ducking your head, looking around, unlocking your shotgun. . . . You try to get help rolling in, in case it’s a snipe.”

So this, they say, is the lot of a foot soldier today in the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t LAPD--notorious now not only for the Rodney G. King beating but also for slow, mismanaged response to rioting.

Morale has bottomed out. Hours are long. A couple thousand weapons looted from stores and pawnshops are somewhere on the street. And the perennial enemy--the violent, hard-core gang members--have become media darlings with their talk of unity and peace.

All considered, police have come through the riots and the tense aftermath with relatively few physical wounds. Several officers have been shot at, but only three were hit by gunfire, and their injuries were minor.

But the atmosphere of fear and mutual suspicion that existed before the rioting is that much more volatile now, especially in South Los Angeles, where police patrols have been beefed up.

There are also greater worries about what could happen when an officer is confronted by a recalcitrant suspect who is slow to respond to orders and does not keep his hands in plain view. Worse, what if the suspect turns out to be a solid citizen confused and perhaps angry at being mistaken for an outlaw?

“The officers are under a lot of stress and pressure,” said Police Commissioner Jesse A. Brewer, a retired LAPD assistant chief. “. . . Leadership is important to make sure officers don’t make errors in judgment out there.”

“I imagine if they err, they will err on the part of self-preservation, rather than on the part of being too nice to somebody,” said Capt. Robert Hansohn of the 77th Street Division in South Los Angeles. “I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

And the Watts riots, after all, flared up after a traffic stop.

The department’s move toward “community-based policing”--which basically means the battering-ram LAPD should be more neighborly and less “just the facts, ma’am” in its dealings with the public--had just begun when the riots started. Now, in the aftermath, heightened security at some police stations has transformed them into fortresses.

In South Los Angeles, officers armed with rifles are posted on the roofs of stations as lookouts, while others guard lobbies and parking lots. At Foothill Division in Pacoima--located about one mile from the site of the King beating--a new masonry wall has been erected to shield the glass doors, and an officer with a shotgun is stationed at a sandbag bunker in the parking lot.

More police and sheriff’s deputies have been deployed on the streets, with officers in the 77th Street Division--in the heart of the riot-torn area--riding three to a car.

Then there are the “tactical alerts.” Police commanders on Tuesday ordered officers to stay on the job and skip meal breaks and to be prepared in case violence erupted after a jury deadlocked on a manslaughter charge against a former Compton police officer who shot two Samoan brothers to death while responding to a domestic dispute at their home.

The drill was repeated Thursday to guard against possible flare-ups of violence police feared might result from a judge’s decision to set high bail amounts on four black men accused of beating a white trucker on the first night of the riots.

“Everybody feels pretty much put upon,” said Lt. Sergio Diaz of Southeast Division. “Long hours, no days off, a lot of people hating you.”

Even in good times, death threats are not unusual in this job. Officers say they try not to be paranoid, just careful--and that they know the law-abiding masses are grateful they are on the job. Some people still give them the occasional thumbs-up; others have sent thank you flowers and cookies to the stations.

“There’s so many rumors, and for the most part that’s all they are,” said Sgt. Paul Vernon of Wilshire Division. “But you have to take them all seriously, because the one you don’t will kill you.”

Officers discuss the danger with varying degrees of bravado.

The threatening graffiti, Officer Patricia Guerra of 77th said, “makes you think: ‘Is it going to happen? Is someone going to be taken out? It’s not going to be me, but . . .’ You have to think that way--that it’s not going to be you.”

Officer James McGill wants to call the gangbangers’ bluff. McGill, who is white, said he intends to check out the reports of snipers waiting for people like him at a certain corner.

“I’ll drive by there all night long. It doesn’t bother me,” McGill said. “If it needs to be dared, we’ll do it. After we get sniped at, if we make it through, then we’ll get the troops out there and take care of it. That’s how I feel about it.”

Not that McGill is without fear. “Oh, I think about it. I have a family. I want to go home at night. . . . That’s why you have to be more aggressive, and you’ve got to watch each other’s backs.”

Sgt. J.J. May, who is white, is watching his own.

Within a week of the riots, May saw the graffiti on a garage in the 6800 block of 10th Avenue in South Los Angeles. His name was misspelled, but the intent is clear: “MaysPolice Killa” and “Johnnie Mays 187.” “They’re real brave now that the town’s gone to s---,” May said. “They’re just a bunch of sneaking, sniping cowards.”

Vernon wheels his black-and-white past the officer guarding the Wilshire station parking lot and promptly joins in a drama unfolding over his radio.

Only a few blocks away, some keen-eyed fellow officers have spotted a brown Audi 5000 that, according to a check of its license plate, had been stolen at gunpoint two days before by men described as black, “armed and dangerous.” There are three black youths inside the Audi as it heads north on La Brea Avenue.

A police helicopter watches overhead. Other police units, monitoring by radio, have joined the operation, and Vernon slides his car into the caravan. When the suspect car is pulled over, no fewer than seven patrol cars and one unmarked police unit are on the scene--the officers out the doors, their guns trained on suspects. Traffic on La Brea is blocked in both directions. The three suspects comply with orders to lie face down on the asphalt.

They are handcuffed and taken in. Later, two are released. The 17-year-old driver is booked into jail. He matches the description of the gunman who stole the car.

It is a good bust--a classic example, Vernon says, of the kind of alert, proactive policing that the department prides itself on. The officers who recovered the Audi and made the arrests had simply driven past the car and seen the people sitting on its hood quickly move away as the squad car approached. That piqued their interest enough to run a make on the license plate.

The large turnout of backup police units was unusual for a force that perennially complains of being understaffed. It reflects both the increased deployment and heightened concern.

Strength in numbers. Then again, consider an intelligence bulletin that was recently circulated among officers, concerning a threatened attack:

“Gang members will set up the police by baiting them into pursuits. They will then take the pursuit (into) side streets and into large numbers of waiting gang members where sniper and ambush situations could occur. The intent would be to get as many officers in the pursuit as possible so many officers could be shot at.”

It adds: “This information cannot be verified at this time.”

Some cops talk like they really believe the recruiting posters that say the Los Angeles police officers come in only one color--blue. “There is no race in this department,” contends 77th Division’s McGill.

Yet race infuses their work in countless ways--obvious and subtle.

One of the exasperating ironies for police is that, despite the LAPD’s embattled image in minority communities, black and Latino voters have historically been more supportive than their white suburban counterparts of ballot measures that would hike taxes to pay for more police.

Among the officers, race influences attitudes. In interviews, black officers seemed at once more skeptical about the gang unity talks and more hopeful that some good could come of it.

“If they want to make this a better place to live, one of the first things blacks have to do is stop preying on each other, stop killing one another,” said Officer Edgar Palmer, who is black. “And if that is indeed the case, then a large step has been taken.”

White officers, more singled out in the threats, see more ominous signs of trouble.

Vernon, who is white and grew up in West Covina, mimicked a local TV news anchor who referred to gang unity as a “positive” development. “How he saw something positive in that, I don’t know,” Vernon said.

After a thoughtful pause, Vernon allowed that he could see the good “if uniting as gangs will stop them from killing each other, and other innocent people . . . But if they want to turn around and kill cops, that’s another thing.”

And like it or not, race is always part of the police lingo.

The radio in Vernon’s squad car tells of a robbery. Over on La Cienega, an elderly woman strolling a short distance from her apartment has been stripped of her ring by someone described only as black male wearing a white T-shirt, last seen running down an alley.

This time, there is no quick arrest. Outside the woman’s apartment, Sgt. Steven Natale and Vernon commiserate about what it is like to be white cops dealing with black suspects.

“That’s the first words out their mouth--’You’re stopping me because I’m black,’ ” Natale mutters. They’ll say that, he adds, even if “you have five black officers right next to you.”

Later, several blocks away, Vernon takes a shortcut through a neighborhood of comfortable homes and spots a black man in a white T-shirt getting into a car. He drives past. After all, he says, he has already seen a few men fitting the vague description of the suspect.

Dusk gives way to night, and a burglary call comes from a street south of Wilshire. Old, run-down, mid-rise apartments line both sides of the street. Vernon points out the high windows and fire escapes on both sides of the street--an ideal setting for an ambush.

Vernon provides backup on a call that turns out to be tenant-landlord dispute--a matter in which police, gratefully, have little authority.

Later that night, on a tattered block of Pico Boulevard, Vernon spots something suspicious. You do not see many Volvos around here, he says.

He whips a U-turn and follows, running a check on the license plate. It is a 1981 Volvo and the computer shows no connection with a crime. Even so, Vernon wants a closer look, so he sidles alongside at a stoplight and shines his flashlight into the car. The worried-looking black man at the wheel appears to be with his wife and children. “That’s a family. They’re OK,” Vernon says, driving on.

To many people, this kind of proactive policing crosses the line, engendering hostility in minority communities and exacerbating tensions. To check a license plate is one thing, they say, but to shine a light in a driver’s face because his car looks out of place in a particular neighborhood is harassment.

Later that night, driving along a darkened street, Vernon acknowledges that the Volvo’s driver might have reason to be angry. As he says this, he trains the beam of his flashlight on pedestrians outside liquor stores and motels. With all the guns on the street, Vernon argues, it is only smart to be on the lookout.

“They may consider that harassment or whatever,” Vernon says. “But you got to shine a light on them to see if they’ve got a gun in their hand or whatever. It’s not because they’re black, but this is a black area, and the people who commit crimes here are predominantly black.

“They feel like they’re being harassed because they’re black. But from the officers’ standpoint, we’ve been singled out as targets by gang members.”

Back at Wilshire Division, the topic among the officers is the way the politicians and media are bashing the LAPD and the nonsense about gangbangers turning over a new leaf. They have been working long hours with no guarantee they will be paid overtime.

“Right now, my morale’s in the toilet,” said Sgt. Dan Mulrenin, “and so is a lot of other people’s. . . . You’ve just got to weather the storm and hope things will turn around.”

Things will turn around, Officer Lennon says. “I look at it like this: The system broke down, but we’re still here. People talk about you, they cuss you out, but we still come when they call.”

Street cops worry that riots could flare again. They worry about what might happen in encounters with the public. They worry about the heat of summer, of people staying out late, drinking too much and raising a ruckus. They worry about how more and more people seem skittish when they approach.

“We’re a constant reminder to them of the situation that happened last year--March 3, 1991,” said Guerra, referring to the King beating. “How they rationalize all that, I’m not so sure about.”

Back before the riots, Guerra was busy with a community-policing project--a memorial event to pay tribute to children who have been killed or wounded by gang violence in 77th Street Division’s turf during recent months. The riots forced the event to be canceled.

Talking about it, Guerra remembered a case from 11 years ago, when she was a rookie: A young Asian boy was walking along a street when “two black male juveniles” demanded his bicycle.

“And because he wouldn’t give it up, they knifed him, and he died right there on the streets. And they took his bike and took off . . . And when I got there, he was still lying on the sidewalk in his little corduroy Ocean Pacific shorts.

“You want to break down and cry sometimes.”

You do not though, the policewoman said, at least not on the job. You keep your cool and you try not to let your emotions interfere with your work.

And you try not to think too much about some puzzling new graffiti that Guerra noticed on the streets. Curious, she asked one of the local taggers what the initials “WDC” stood for.

The answer: “We don’t care.”

Times staff writers Stephen Braun, Michael Connelly and Steve Padilla contributed to this article.