2 Neighborhoods Fight Back With Private Security Patrol

Sgt. David White took time off from his nightly patrol to chat with five men who griped about car vandals and apathetic neighbors.

“I’ve been burgled three or four different times,” grumbled Keith Marple, as he stroked an orange kitten named Charlie.

It could have been a textbook scene on the much-touted community-based policing, in which Los Angeles Police Department officers get to know the people in the neighborhoods they patrol. But White is not a police officer. He is a private security guard hired by Echo Park and Angelino Heights residents to guard their hilly turf.

Until recent years, residential security guards primarily patrolled wealthy neighborhoods such as Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. But as police forces are stretched thin and crime problems persist, less affluent neighborhoods are opting for private security protection.

The industry’s move into lower-income areas is “clearly part of a progression,” said Robert McCrie, editor of Security Letter, a trade publication. “Today’s patrol companies provide the eyes and ears that neighborhoods did for themselves in earlier generations.”

Through aggressive community organizing, Echo Park and Angelino Heights residents have secured an especially good deal for themselves. Their patrol company, Westridge Security Service Inc., charges as much as $35 per household per month for a private guard, but because residents of the two neighborhoods pay as a group, the rate is only $10 a month for each of about 400 subscribers.

For that price, a guard patrols eight hours a day, seven days a week. The low cost of the service has made it accessible to a cross-section of the community, which has a large Latino and Asian population, say members of the patrol.

“The fact that we’ve been able to keep the price low has allowed a lot of people to empower themselves,” said Gil Jaffe, one of the organizers of the patrol.

The neighborhood first retained a security company 18 months ago, then switched to Canoga Park-based Westridge in October. Already, White, who is the regular guard on the beat, has made a name for himself. In November, White went to the aid of a resident who was shot in the chest by gang members after asking them not to spray graffiti on a wall. Soon after, White rescued two children and their mother from a burning house. Then White helped recover the car of a man who had been hit over the head by a couple of carjackers.

“I don’t even think he lived in the area. He just happened to need the help at the time, and we were just lucky to be there,” said White, who has ambitions to be a police officer.

What Jaffe calls “audio graffiti”--gunshots fired into the air--helped spur community members to seek a patrol company about a year and a half ago. “It was bothering an awful lot of people,” Jaffe said of the noise.

But when neighbors initially looked into hiring a security guard, most companies were offering individual contracts that cost $25 per household, a monthly rate that failed to garner much support in the middle- to low-income neighborhood. That is when residents got the idea of pooling their resources and paying as a group for a patrol car that would be dedicated to the area.

Yeu-Wei Yee, an elementary schoolteacher, remembers what led him to sign up. A bunch of teen-agers were hanging out near his house, breaking car windows and committing other acts of vandalism.

“We used to call the police, but it just didn’t rank high on their priority list, understandably,” he said. Since he signed up, the teen-age troublemakers have disbanded, Yee said.

Lupe Fernandez, who lives on Curran Street, tells a similar story. She said she was unable to get police to respond when someone threatened her mother, who also lives in the neighborhood. “On emergencies that we have had, we have not had prompt police response,” she said. “If either I or one of my children are in need of help, I know that I will get the patrol here.”

Residents say the security patrol has brought the ethnically diverse community together. At least one subscriber has organized bilingual block group meetings. William Nettles, who has done some knocking on doors, said he has gotten “a chance to talk to people I never talk to.”

The effort also has woven 40 Neighborhood Watch groups together under the umbrella of the Echo Park Security Assn., which collects dues from members and pays Westridge directly for the service. The association puts out a quarterly newsletter. “Now, in Echo Park, instead of just Neighborhood Watch, we now have a Community Watch,” said Ron, a community organizer who asked that his last name not be used.

Organizers got the idea of a private patrol company from Silver Lake residents, who hired a professional guard after volunteer foot patrols in the area were the target of a drive-by shooting. Unlike Echo Park subscribers, Silver Lake’s 125 subscribers pay individually for a slightly different arrangement with Westridge, said Barbara Dakin, executive director of the Silver Lake Improvement Assn. The fee is also higher--$20 a month per household. Apartment dwellers pay $10, Dakin said.

Private security guards have different missions and powers than police officers. A private security guard cannot detain a person for acting suspiciously. Like anyone, private guards can make a citizen’s arrest if they witness a crime, said Ron Vencill, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

“Their job is not to confront, so much as it is to observe,” said Jaffe. But simply observing can be quite helpful. Information supplied by the neighborhood’s first service, Golden West K-9, helped persuade several landlords to evict drug dealing, crack-smoking tenants, Jaffe said.

“The patrolman is a perfect witness because he’s not living in the neighborhood. He’s not subject to retaliation,” Jaffe said.

Joe Writer, an officer with the LAPD’s Northeast Division, has plenty of praise for private security patrols. By dealing with minor problems such as public drunkenness, Writer said, the security patrol frees the police for more serious crimes.

The neighborhood group lacks statistics to evaluate the overall impact of the patrol on crime in the neighborhood. But Nettles and others believe that crime on streets where subscribers live has dropped. Nettles said periodic burglaries on Park Drive ceased last year after the private security guard worked to eliminate illegally parked cars in the area.

Kurt Straffer, president of Westridge Security Services Inc., argues that the success of the patrol also depends on the vigilance of the neighbors.

Echo Park certainly has its share of enthusiastic crime fighters. Nettles spends about 20 hours a month on work related to the security patrol and has tracked the area’s crime on a monthly basis for the last two years. Colored dots plotted along streets on his map indicate the location and type of crime committed.

The colored dots show you “it is in your neighborhood and make you think about it,” said Nettles, whose maps are circulated at Neighborhood Watch meetings.

Nettles was spurred to action by trouble on his own street, Morton Avenue. Standing on his gated porch, he points to a boxy, brown house that he said used to be inhabited by heavy drug users, and then to a wall across the street where he said a man once sat and sold drugs.

Lately, he said, Morton Avenue has had its crime problem under control.

“I think we’ve got some drug dealers moving in, but that won’t last,” he said. “The word is slowly getting out that if you mess around in Echo Park, somebody is going to be paying very close attention to you.”