LAPD Gang Task Force Deployed Despite Truce : Police: Critics say putting 40 officers on aggressive patrols sends the wrong message during a fragile peace.

Despite pleas by some community leaders that police not jeopardize a fragile gang truce in South Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department has quietly begun deploying a large “crime suppression task force” to aggressively patrol gang neighborhoods during the summer.

The police effort was launched two weeks ago, at a time when LAPD officials were publicly assuring activists and gang members that nothing would be done to disturb the delicate accord that, for the past eight weeks, has virtually halted violence between most factions of the Bloods and Crips.

But in a confidential Police Department memo obtained Thursday by The Times, it is clear that top-level commanders are more suspicious of the gangs’ motives than they have previously expressed and have decided to do more than monitor activity from afar. The memo calls for about 40 veteran patrol officers, transferred from the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, to combine forces in a show of police muscle in South Los Angeles.

“Numerous incidents of violence against police officers have continued to occur,” the memorandum states, referring to a June 6 gang party at the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts that erupted into a melee during which 30 officers were reportedly injured.

“In order to stem this violence, it is the department’s intention to maintain a highly visible police presence in the area,” the memo adds. “This task force is specifically designed as a crime suppression task force.”

The transfer of officers from other areas of the city--a move that is expected to be raised at Police Chief-designate Willie L. Williams’ first command-level meeting on Wednesday--was defended by several top LAPD officials, who called it a necessary step to quell potentially volatile situations.

“We felt it was important enough to have this kind of capability and this kind of an organizational unit to better handle any emergencies or any violent crowd problems that might crop up,” said Cmdr. Bob Gil, an LAPD spokesman. “It’s an attempt to properly police the city.”

Gil said police started the special deployment of patrol officers into the area after the department was blocked in court by the police union from redeploying detectives. The Police Protective League successfully argued that such a move would have violated the detectives’ union contract.

The new uniformed assignments will continue at least until Williams takes office and makes his own decisions on deployment, Gil said. “So right now this is kind of in a state of flux,” he said.

Gil said the plan was ordered by Deputy Chief Ronald A. Frankle, who oversees police operations throughout the city. The police spokesman said he did not know what role, if any, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates assumed in creating the assignments.

Several community leaders, along with a few LAPD insiders, criticized the redeployment, saying it sends the wrong message to gang members who are seeking a way to lay down their guns. Also, some police officials expressed concern that the transfers could hamper routine crime-fighting efforts and new community-based policing programs in other parts of the city.

“Now is the time to start communicating and building a better relationship,” said VG Guinses, director of Save Every Youngster Youth Enterprise Society, a gang counseling center. “If you come in waving sticks, saying, ‘If you get out of hand, we gonna go upside your head,’ all you’re doing is creating a problem. Nobody’s gonna win.”

A high-ranking police official, who requested anonymity, also questioned the wisdom of the Police Department publicly stating that officers are merely monitoring the situation, when in reality they are being much more aggressive.

“We’re almost issuing a challenge to the gangs by trying to show them how tough the police are,” he said. The newly deployed officers, he added, “are experienced with working with gang members, and they don’t want to take any gang crap. They’re going to go in there and want to knock heads together.”

“I’m generally in favor of the cops,” he added. “But . . . this is not the way to go.”

In the Valley and Westside, top commanders expressed concern that the loss of personnel could hamper law enforcement operations in their communities.

“It does squeeze our efforts more tightly,” said Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, who oversees police operations in the Valley. “In today’s current state . . . everybody that we lose hurts. It contributes to the scarcity that we already have.”

Deputy Chief Glenn Levant in the West Bureau said the loss of staff will curtail his efforts at new community-based policing programs. “Any time you take this many police officers out of their regular assignments, its disruptive,” he said.

Kroeker and Levant said they were not sure how the deployment order came about--whether police officials in the South Bureau requested the additional officers or whether it was simply mandated by Frankle, who signed the redeployment order.

The June 11 order states that 20 officers each from the Valley and the Westside will be loaned to the South Bureau for the entire summer. In addition, each bureau will loan a sergeant to the task force.

The officers will be paired as partners and each team will be assigned a new black-and-white patrol car equipped with a department-issue shotgun. So they can mobilize quickly, the two supervisors will be allowed to take their patrol cars home with them, and the other officers may park the cruisers at the police station closest to their residence.

Frankle was attending the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., and could not be reached for comment Thursday. Deputy Chief Matthew J. Hunt, who heads the South Bureau, also could not be reached.

Just last week, Hunt expressed cautious optimism about the truce, telling the Police Commission that gang-related homicides in South Los Angeles had dropped to two last month, compared with 16 in May, 1991.

“They have to acknowledge that,” said James Lasley, a Cal State Fullerton criminal justice professor who has studied the LAPD. “But privately, they’ve always been highly suspicious of the truce. They’ve never really let their guard down.”

When told of the redeployment, several community activists and gang members said Thursday that they welcomed the chance to meet with police to discuss ways of maintaining the peace, but were concerned that the additional officers were being sent primarily to “kick butt,” as ex-gang member Fred Williams put it.

“They should just let it be,” said Williams, who heads Common Ground, a program aimed at keeping at-risk youths in school. “If the police weren’t always agitating people, maybe they wouldn’t be the target of so many violent acts.”

As it is, some gang members said, the spirited and sometimes rowdy “unity” parties of recent weeks have already begun to diminish. Those Bloods and Crips who have made peace since the riots are ready to embark on efforts to improve their economic and social conditions.

“There’s enough time for parties,” said Daude Sherrills, a lifelong resident of Jordan Downs who is widely considered one of the key architects of the truce. “It’s time to get down to business.”