Vigilant or Vigilantes? : Studio City: Strike force members say their watchfulness cuts crime. Others say it could violate rights.

They were well-off, well-wheeled, cellular-ready and itching for action.

“I want to catch someone,” one of them told Officer James O’Riley.

The members of the Studio City Citizens Strike Force, a group that patrols neighborhood streets, caught no criminals that day.

But they tipped off O’Riley to people they believed looked suspicious. He followed and questioned several. The suspicious characters included members of minority groups, young people and those whose cars or clothing gave the impression that they did not live in the upper-income hillside community.

The group, made up mostly of professionals, is one of many examples of community-oriented policing in the San Fernando Valley.

It is a sign of the effort’s success, police officers and residents say. But some of its activities raise questions about whether Neighborhood Watch can threaten the rights of non-neighbors, including the right to travel on public streets, some observers say.

Jerome Skolnick, a UC Berkeley law professor who has written books and articles on community-oriented policing, said there is a danger that neighborhood groups will overstep their bounds.

“I think it is a potential downside,” he said. “The more community policing begins to look like vigilantism, the less acceptable it will be in a democratic society.

“But the up side is that you have people who are potentially self-protecting; they are watching and working with police.”

Attorney Carol Sobel of the American Civil Liberties Union voiced concern about the group when it was described to her.

“Certainly, members of the public have the right and should call the police when they see a crime being committed,” she said. “But to have these roaming patrols that seem to work on the premise that being young, poor and a minority makes you suspicious is really problematic.”

Jose DeSosa, state NAACP president and a Valley resident, said he has heard of no complaints about Neighborhood Watch groups such as the strike force. But he said he is afraid they “can get out of hand.”

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Richard Webb said he too is concerned about potential abuse. But he said the program hurts no one as long as the members only tip off the police and do not detain people.

“The question is, are the people acting as an agent of the police or are we, as I see it, acting as an agent of the people?” he said.

The strike force members and O’Riley, senior lead officer for the hillside neighborhoods in Studio City, defend the program. They say residents simply take down license plates and descriptions of cars that they deem suspicious. They then call a house that is designated as headquarters, where a resident calls O’Riley on a police radio.

John De Pascale, a chemical manufacturer and a strike force founder, said it “absolutely does not” target members of minority groups. It focuses attention on suspicious people in the neighborhood, regardless of their race, he said. Pascale said most law-abiding people do not mind being followed and questioned.

“Personally, if I were driving down the street and someone wanted to check my license plates, I wouldn’t mind,” he said. In fact, he said, he has been questioned while driving around his neighborhood.

O’Riley said he has heard no complaints from anyone stopped or questioned. Some, he said, have seemed happy that neighbors have become active.

“That is what the criminals rely on, the non-involvement of the citizens,” he said.

During one four-hour patrol with the group, O’Riley questioned a Studio City resident who was resting on a neighbor’s lawn after a tough bicycle ride, a young interracial couple that O’Riley thought were skinheads and three young men in a sports car.

While O’Riley questioned the interracial couple, several strike force members in Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs pulled up around the patrol car, forming a backup team for the officer.

O’Riley also followed two black men who were driving an old Volvo. He said they did not look him in the eye as they drove by. A check of the license number found nothing wrong.

He said another reason he checked the two men out was that 70% of crime in the area is committed by black males, based on reports by crime victims.

Regardless of questions about civil liberties, residents believe that the patrols have cut crime in their community. They cite a period between April and May when crimes committed in a neighborhood that was patrolled dropped from 11 to 4.

In June, residents riding with O’Riley saw a couple sitting in a car reported stolen two days earlier. They were arrested and charged with receiving stolen property and using vehicle without permission.