Mid-City : Police Target Crime’s Underlying Causes

In a trailer parked behind the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division station, Sgt. Dominic Licavoli preaches the gospel of problem-oriented policing.

“If community policing is the bread, then problem-oriented policing is the beef,” Licavoli said.

Problem-oriented policing, or POP, is “another tool in an officer’s bag of tricks,” said Licavoli, whose division is the only one in the city actively using the POP approach. “It’s not a fix-all, but it is a more effective way of doing business every day,” he said.

The POP approach, based on more than 20 years of research by law enforcement experts, is designed to help officers look beyond the traditional “incident-driven” nature of their work and attack underlying circumstances, Licavoli said.

The approach involves four steps.

In the first stage, an officer, with the help of residents, defines a problem by grouping related incidents in a neighborhood.

Next, the officer collects information from police, city government and neighborhood sources. In one case, a Rampart officer investigating complaints about drug sales near Pico Boulevard and Vermont Avenue found that some businesses were allowing dealers to hide in their buildings, and illegal street vendors were paid or coerced to hold the dealers’ money, Licavoli said.

In the next step, the response stage, the officer develops a custom-fit answer to the problem: for example, suspending the licenses of businesses providing refuge to drug dealers. The officer would enlist the help of the City Attorney’s Office, the Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control, the health department, and other city and federal agencies.

Finally, the officer assesses the success of the response.

“The idea is to identify the roots that nourish the problem and then chop away at roots until the tree dies,” Licavoli said.

Licavoli has been training his senior lead officers in the POP approach since May. At last count, Rampart officers were engaged in 26 POP projects, involving illegal vendors, narcotics, prostitution, illegal dumping and burglaries.

Thomas Coyle, chairman of the Westlake Neighborhood Watch Group and a participant in a fledgling West 7th Street POP project, said realistic goals have to be set. “We can’t defeat gangs or the homeless problem right away, but we can make the neighborhood less desirable for criminals,” he said.

Senior Lead Officer Patricia Gerst used the POP approach a block from the Rampart police station, which is at 2710 W. Temple St. Gerst found that a homeowner was allowing as many as 20 transients to stay at his house. Some were suspected of receiving stolen property, illegal dumping on the property, and--thanks to receipts found in neighbors’ trash--credit-card fraud, Gerst said.

Working with neighbors, the Building and Safety Department and other police units, Gerst helped force the owner to clean up his property and evict the illegal tenants, five of whom were arrested for outstanding warrants.

Gerst “helped educate us and became our doorway into the system,” said Paul Gamberg, president of the neighborhood association that helped observe and document the activities at the house. “It all comes down to trusting your cop, your cop trusting you, and your cop knowing the good guys and the bad guys,” Gamberg said.