Understanding the Riots--Six Months Later : A New Blue Line / REMAKING THE LAPD : Six Months Later, a Day on the Beat : The streets are still scarred from the riots, the department has new leadership, but the mission remains steadfast for the officers sworn to protect and to serve.

Los Angeles Police Officer Steve Smith, a 25-year-old son of the South-Central neighborhoods he now patrols, remembers the news flashing over the police radio a little after 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29. It was a verdict that, if not for a famous videotape and the volatility of the times, might have been interpreted as a vindication of the proud Los Angeles Police Department.

Not this time. At a red light, a woman motorist cussed out Smith. At a different intersection, another woman sat sobbing behind her steering wheel. And two hours later, Smith would be among the officers ordered to retreat from the vicinity of Florence and Normandie as a taunting, bottle-throwing mob, all but daring police to open fire, unleashed the nation’s largest, most lethal riot in more than 100 years. Long before the flames were out, the LAPD would feel its reputation and morale sink to once unthinkable depths.

Today, the LAPD has a new chief and a fledgling community-oriented policing philosophy. But it is even more true that much remains the same. Every day, far removed from the politics of City Hall and Parker Center, the troops battle against a crime rate that seems overwhelming. On Oct. 29, six months to the day after rage ignited Los Angeles, The Times followed Smith and several fellow officers to observe the interaction between the LAPD and the public they are sworn to protect and serve.

Over their day, these officers dealt with incidents ranging from fistfights and false alarms to alleged child molesting and drive-by shootings. It was, unlike April 29, a fairly typical day.

ON PATROL / ‘I give it my best’

For Officer Margaret Casey, the workday started early and lasted long. At 6:45 a.m., the 34-year-old Los Angeles resident reported to duty in Southeast Division, an area riddled with poverty and crime long before the riots. Casey usually works juvenile cases on turf that includes Watts and five housing projects. On this day, after roll call, the talkative Casey teamed with Officer Deanna Soriano, a quiet, reserved 28-year-old with four years on the force.

Casey piloted the black-and-white past walls covered with graffiti and windows adorned with bars. Casey said she still feels the community’s anger toward the police. The police force, she said, is “tired and frustrated. We need more people, more resources.” As for her own morale: “Well, I come to work and I do it a day at a time. I give it my best.”

At midmorning Casey turned up a dirt alley and spotted two truant teen-age boys tearing bars from a broken crib. The officers wondered aloud about why the boys wanted the bars. To break windows? To serve as weapons? Casey and Soriano handcuffed the boys. Both were 16 and one, especially, acted tough. He’s a gangster, he said, and plans to be “a high roller.” Casey gave him the telephone number of a counselor as she drove the boy home. “I want to see you at my age driving a police car, OK, not in handcuffs,” Casey told him as she left him with his mother.

But, as the officers started to drive off, the boy suddenly bolted out of his house, furious at his mother. And the mother shouted, “Take his ass, I don’t care.” Instead, the two officers stopped to perform as family counselors once again. This time, the young gangster started to cry and stayed home.

Before noon, Casey and Soriano responded to an anonymous tip phoned into the Southeast Division. They found a 14-year-old girl home alone in a tiny apartment. Her father, she told Casey, had been molesting her. It started, she said, when she was 8 years old--and her mother knew.

After searching for the girl’s father, Casey and Soriano delivered her to a San Pedro clinic for medical tests as other officers retrieved her two younger brothers and a younger sister from school. Later the four children jammed into the back seat of Casey’s unit, clutching pumpkin-shaped box lunches Casey had bought them at a McDonald’s en route to a county social worker and foster care.

The case, with all its paperwork, kept Casey busy past 7 p.m.--a 12 1/2-hour shift.

It’s worth it, she said. “I spent time as a kid in Juvenile Hall, a habitual runaway. Fortunately I had somebody who motivated me to do something positive. So I try to tell whoever I come in contact with, no matter what’s going on in your life, you can turn it around.”

DETECTIVE BUREAU / ‘This is my home’

Several miles to the northwest, Lt. Paul Kim’s climb up the career ladder had landed him behind a desk in a large, windowless room at Wilshire Division. A Korean-American, Kim already is the highest-ranking officer of Asian ancestry--a distinction that inspires mixed feelings. “That’s nothing to be proud of, really,” said Kim, who was born in Seoul and immigrated to the United States at age 15. “There aren’t enough of us.”

For Kim this was one of his last weeks as the No. 2 person in the Wilshire detective bureau, supervising more than 50 detectives. Kim soon was to be transferred to Parker Center as an adjutant to a deputy chief--a choice assignment that could catapult him into the LAPD’s upper echelons.

By virtue of his heritage, Kim routinely encounters pressures beyond the normal duties of an LAPD lieutenant. A telephone call promptly illustrated his point. Kim, after speaking with a caller in Korean, explained later that it was a woman with “a vice problem, which I don’t handle. Because I’m a known commodity in the community, they call me . . . for everything from petty theft to murder to juvenile problems to zoning problems.”

A San Fernando Valley resident, Kim said he still considers Koreatown his home. Relatives live there. He goes to a Korean church and routinely eats at restaurants in Koreatown. However, the riots strained Kim’s dual loyalties to the LAPD and a Korean community that felt abandoned when many of their businesses were burned and looted during the riots.

“Koreans feel that ‘you let it happen to us because you don’t respect Koreans. You’re not sensitive to Koreans,’ ” he said.

On the other hand, Kim said, there are some fellow officers who question whether his closeness to the Korean community could compromise him as a policeman. Nonsense, Kim said. “This is my home. Seoul, Korea, is not my home. Los Angeles is.”

As Koreatown became a battle zone, Kim mediated disputes and persuaded some frightened merchants to put away the guns they used to defend their stores. Later, as a field commander monitoring huge Koreatown demonstrations, Kim felt the sting of criticism from a community leader who told others that Kim, as a police officer, couldn’t be trusted. But that attitude shifted as the march developed.

“I still get goose bumps thinking about it,” Kim said. “You could see the burned stores, and people were coming out giving us food, drinks and thanking us for protecting them.”

As he drove his unmarked police car through Koreatown on Oct. 29, Kim stopped at the Oxford Center on West 8th Street, where virtually all the businesses are Korean-owned or operated. He was greeted warmly by several people, including waitresses at a coffee shop where clocks show the time in Los Angeles, New York and Seoul.

Yong Jo Choi, owner of a nearby restaurant, approached and shook Kim’s hand. After more than 20 years in Los Angeles, Choi told the officer that nothing has changed since the riots and that he, like other Koreans, may sell his business and move. “We want the police department to pay more attention to Koreatown,” he said. “So far they haven’t helped.”

Kim’s response is a plaintive one, citing the lack of resources and personnel: “It’s tough. It’s tough.”

COMMUNITY POLICING / ‘I’m a problem-solver’

When Officer Stephany Payne of the Foothill Division visited the Pacoima Recreation Center, she saw the familiar faces of the Project Boyz gang. She also saw something that looked like blood. It was, in fact, the fake blood on a Halloween haunted house that gang youths were building for neighborhood kids. The teen-agers gravitated toward Payne, as if seeking approval from the friendly officer who for months had been encouraging them to help the community rather than hurt it.

Payne, 35, a single mother, was a fourth-grade teacher before becoming a police officer nine years ago. And now works full time at community-based policing, a law enforcement approach embraced by Chief Willie L. Williams. “I’m kind of like a jack-of-all-trades. Everything to everybody,” she said. “I’m a problem-solver.”

Payne’s priority is to become a trusted face that people recognize, to record their complaints, and to talk about ways of discouraging crime. When rioting broke out April 29, Payne and another officer met with the Project Boyz to urge them to remain peaceful. They did her one better, protecting shops on nearby Van Nuys Boulevard from looters. “I saw community-based policing at its best during the riots,” Payne said. “It showed we had connected with people.”

Now, six months later, Payne cruised down Osborne Street and pulled over when she saw two women she had helped start a Neighborhood Watch program. One woman, pushing a baby carriage, proudly showed off her infant daughter Stephany --named for Officer Stephany Payne, who was to be the baby’s godmother.

Only once on this day was Payne thrust into the role of the street cop. At 4:10 p.m. her radio broadcast a shooting report at Hubert Humphrey Park in Pacoima. One victim, the dispatcher said, was down in a restroom.

Payne switched on the patrol siren and flashing lights as she sped to the scene. Her easygoing smile and manner evaporated. “Probably gang related--nine out of 10 times it is,” she said. She pulled into the park shortly after an ambulance and firetruck, her car smelling of burning oil. But a search yielded nothing. It was a false alarm.

That night, as rain misted her windshield, the officer cruised down Del Sur Street. Gang activity in the area, Payne said, had eased up since residents formed a Neighborhood Watch group and installed high-intensity security lights outside their homes. Payne spotted two familiar faces in an open garage and stopped to visit. All was well, they told her, except that gang members had started congregating in a nearby house. Payne noted the address in her planning book, promising to pay the homeowner a visit.

ANTI-GANG SQUAD / ‘I’m getting tired of it’

Moments after pulling onto the graffiti-scarred streets of Watts, the anti-gang CRASH team of Sgt. Bill Shortley and Officer Steve Smith had the handcuffs out. The handcuffs weren’t for a gangbanger this time, but for a 12-year-old girl scuffling with other young girls on 103rd Street.

“Let’s take her home,” Shortley said. But the girl, eager to settle the dispute on her own terms, did not want to be rescued. Tears streaming down her face, she flailed her arms, shouting “Let me go! Let me go!” as the officers pulled her from the swarm. She wanted to keep fighting. The officers cuffed her hands behind her back, then drove her to her parents’ apartment.

When the girl’s father saw them arrive, he stepped outside and shouted: “This is a little child--my 12-year-old daughter--why you got her handcuffed?”

“For her safety and ours,” replied Smith.

“You all handcuff-crazy!” barked her father.

“Would you have preferred we just left her in the street and let 50 other kids beat her up?” Shortley asked.

“What a silly-ass question,” said the man as he turned his back and headed inside.

“That,” said Shortley, as he climbed back in the patrol car, “is a prime example of how people act to us now.”

CRASH--which is an acronym for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums--is a choice assignment for an aggressive, streetwise cop. It’s a duty that attracts officers drawn to action, the adrenaline, and the moments of satisfaction in taking truly bad guys off the streets. But in many South Los Angeles neighborhoods that have grown mistrustful of police, officers have come to accept that they will be criticized regardless of how they perform their duties.

“I feel like I come to work every day and get hit in the face,” said Shortley, whose 14-year-old son keeps him apprised of the latest LAPD jokes. “I’m getting tired of it.”

Bill Shortley, 40, began his police career in Washington in 1973 and came to the LAPD in 1975. After nearly a dozen assignments, he made sergeant in 1988 and now supervises the 12 CRASH officers. “Because of the way things are now, I’m going to take the next lieutenants’ test, and if I don’t make it, I’m going to retire,” Shortley said.

Steve Smith, a five-year veteran, grew up in South-Central. Catholic school and sports kept him on a straight path, he says, but many boyhood pals drifted into gangs. “A lot of the gang members I come in contact with, I think they respect me, like: ‘That’s one of our own, not one of them,’ ” he said. “But not everyone feels that way.”

On their beat, trouble isn’t hard to find. About 3 p.m., they saw a young man slap a woman in the head. He claimed that the woman, his estranged girlfriend, had invited him over--but when he arrived she was talking to another man. “It’s all about respect,” the young man said.

“Smacking her around is not going to make her respect you,” Shortley said. The girlfriend chose not to press charges.

Sunset neared and the sky darkened with gathering rain clouds. Then, at 5:50 p.m., gang duties called Shortley and Smith to a home on 81st Street near Denker Avenue. An 18-year-old woman, sitting on the hood of a parked car, had been critically wounded by a bullet fired from a dark sedan traveling west. The bullet had apparently struck her spinal cord. She was paralyzed, paramedics said. The suspects were long gone.

‘HANDYMAN’ DUTY / ‘I’m a counselor. I’m everything’

By the time Sgt. Joe Owens responded to 81st Street, Smith, Shortley and other officers had begun questioning witnesses. This was the turf of the Eight-Trey Gangster Crips; neighbors suggested the assailants were probably from one of two rival gangs.

Owens, an 18-year veteran with a measured, low-key demeanor, pulled one witness aside as other officers combed the street with their flashlights, searching for clues. Owens didn’t learn much, he said later. This crime wouldn’t be solved tonight, if at all.

Meanwhile, the radio crackled with potential trouble at the infamous crossroads of Florence and Normandie, where media had converged to cover a candlelight vigil marking the six-month anniversary of the riots.

Owens and other police returned to the intersection, keeping their distance as a few bottles were tossed into the street. When a dark sedan carrying three young men pulled into the gas station, officers quickly ordered them out and frisked them. After questioning, they were ruled out as suspects in the shooting on 81st and released.

With a soft rain falling, Owens spoke hopefully of a quiet night. It got so quiet, in fact, that the watch commander dispatched him to visit “a very nice lady” who had called to say that police had recently damaged her gate chasing some suspects. So Owens went to the woman’s home on 46th Street, just off Figueroa.

A U-shaped metal coupling on the woman’s gate had been bent, preventing it from closing. Owens managed to bend the coupling back into shape. And he suggested she get a dog that might keep bad guys out of her yard. “I’m a handyman. A counselor. I’m everything,” he quipped later.

The calm didn’t last. Later, Owens had to back up officers searching for a robbery suspect. Then he was en route to a stabbing when a higher priority report came over the radio--the second drive-by shooting of the night, this one near 82nd and Western.

Owens arrived to find paramedics and other officers already there. “Man, are you lucky,” a paramedic told the victim. It was a glancing shot. The bullet had entered the man’s chest over his heart but exited just inches to the side. A second bullet struck his buttocks. The victim identified himself as an Eight-Trey. “So much for the truce, huh?” Owens said later, dismissing reports that many gang factions had made peace after the riots.

Another hot call soon came over the radio--three men walking along Hoover and shooting a gun. One was described as wearing a Raiders jacket. The police helicopter streaked overhead and soon caught the Raiders jacket in its spotlight. Owens was the second officer on the scene. The first officer had his gun drawn and pointed at the suspect, who was kneeling, hands in the air. Owens handcuffed him. Yes, the suspect told officers, he was walking along Hoover with some friends, but he claimed to know nothing about any gunfire.

Police suspected he had ditched the gun in a friend’s home nearby, but they did not have sufficient cause to search the place.

The 18-year-old got off with a stern warning to stay out of trouble. “You know what you were doing, and I know what you were doing,” an officer told him.

The young man nodded and went on his way.