Looking for Trouble : Police Volunteer Program Puts More Eyes, Ears on Street

It’s a Saturday night roll call at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division, and Officer Rodney Skeeter points to a chalk diagram on the blackboard.

“I want one person on the west end of the building, and one person on the east end,” Skeeter says.

The streets are unpredictable, he warns. “As you know, when you go out, anything can happen,” he says.

The five people listening to the briefing are not police officers. They are volunteers in a program that recruits civilians to act as the “eyes and ears” of the Police Department.

At least twice a week, for more than two years, Skeeter has taken volunteers to known trouble spots to look for graffiti vandals, car thieves and other lawbreakers.

The volunteers take up surveillance positions assigned by police and communicate with each other and officers by two-way radio.

The program, called Northeast Surveillance Team (NEST), allows the understaffed department to keep a better watch on neighborhoods, he said. The civilians are not expected to arrest anyone or make contact with those who commit crimes. Their goal is to observe the crime and the arrest and to assist the prosecution by giving an eyewitness account in court.

Some defense attorneys “get apprehensive” about going to trial when the witnesses are volunteers and are more prone to plea bargain, Skeeter said.

Although not all prosecutors agree, Alice Hand, supervising attorney for the Chinatown branch of the city attorney’s office, said she thinks civilians make better prosecution witnesses than police officers.

“They’re just going to come across as being much more honest and forthright and interested in the case than the detached professional. They’re dealing with something they have a stake in.”

The program has about 20 active volunteers. Most live or work in the community.

Although it is not required, most of the volunteers attend training sessions on learn how to identify vehicles and drug traffickers and the basics of court procedure, Skeeter said.

Less experienced volunteers are teamed with program veterans, he said.

The NEST volunteers on Saturday’s stakeout shared a fascination with police work.

David Phillips, 24, and his wife, Brenda, 22, want to be a police officers and hope that their work with the Northeast Division will help them get into the Police Academy.

Steve Hutcheson, 37, said he once thought of becoming a police officer himself, but he “didn’t want to go out there and get shot at.”

The surveillance work gives him the “adrenaline rush” of police work without the danger. “You get pretty excited when something’s going down,” Hutcheson said.

He recalls how his team helped Skeeter catch two teen-age graffiti vandals last year. One of them turned out to be armed. Another time, he spotted two car radio thieves trying to make a quick getaway. “That was my first night,” he said. “That was pretty amazing.”

Another volunteer, Lloyd Payne, 56, is a Los Angeles City park patrol officer whose beat is Griffith Park. Although he doesn’t carry a gun on his job, he says he does the work of a police officer: making arrests, preserving crime scenes, and contending with drunks and gang members. He volunteers for the NEST program to sharpen his skills.

After the briefing, the volunteers piled into their car and headed for their outposts. David and Brenda Phillips were assigned to the roof of an Eagle Rock clothing store. The owner’s son, Joel Piller, met the couple at the door and led them upstairs and through a dark crawl space to the roof. The husband and wife quietly took their places at opposite ends of the roof.

Nearby, Skeeter and his partner cruised the area in an unmarked car, waiting for dispatches from the rooftop volunteers.

As well as giving him two-way contact with Skeeter, David Phillips’ radio allowed him to listen to the Northeast Division’s dispatcher. There were about half a dozen domestic violence reports. A man was reported being dragged from his car and beaten. There were reports of gunfire and an attempted suicide.

But below Phillips, Colorado Boulevard was quiet. Most of the stores in the pink mini-mall across the street were shut. The parking lot was virtually empty. Two people were out with their dog. A jogger passed by.

“To me, it looks like the biggest problem here is the speeders,” said David Phillips, with evident disappointment. But he stayed alert, and as Skeeter’s unmarked car passed below, Phillips warned him of a speeding Volkswagen approaching the police car from the rear.

Later in the evening, Skeeter and his partner stopped a man for speeding, ran a check on his license and sent him on his way with a warning.

The neighborhood is not always so tranquil, according to Piller.

“(Graffiti writers) did that whole restaurant a couple of weeks ago,” Piller said, pointing to an apparently repainted Kenney’s Restaurant-Coffee Shop. Local business people, including his father, worry that graffiti drives away customers, he said.

The evening’s stakeout wrapped up about 11 p.m. as quietly as it began. The volunteers seemed disappointed by the lack of action.

“Nothing happened,” Payne complained, back at the station.

When asked whether it might be more likely to catch lawbreakers at later hours, Skeeter agreed but explained that volunteers could not always be expected to be as flexible as paid officers. And occasionally, volunteers stay on their posts as late as 4 a.m., he said.

Skeeter said he doesn’t keep statistics on the number or arrests made during NEST stakeouts, but he estimates that 60% of the stakeouts result in arrests.

Surveillance work is very much like fishing, he said. “You can’t expect to catch something every time.”