Part of New Officers’ Job Is Learning to Listen : Police: Commander of LAPD’s Foothill Division invites activists in to improve relations.

Marie Harris faced the room full of police officers Monday to recount the arrest of a neighbor several years ago and a confrontation that followed.

“An officer yelled at me: ‘Go home. Get out of here. This is none of your business!’ ” Harris said. “I told him ‘I live here. Why don’t you go home?’ ”

That officer saw her several weeks later at a community meeting and apologized--it was Theodore J. Briseno, who faces federal charges in the beating of Rodney G. King.

Harris, a longtime police booster and occasional critic, was one of three community activists who spoke Monday of their experiences with the Los Angeles Police Department at the first seminar ever in which officers newly assigned to the Foothill Division were required to listen to activists speak on police and community relations.

Capt. Tim McBride, Foothill commander, told the officers that part of community-based policing is learning to listen to people with whom they may disagree.

“If we don’t include the community, we can’t do our job,” McBride said. “We didn’t create the problems in this community. We’re just stuck with solving them.”

In the nearly two years since the King beating, McBride has been credited by local residents and the department brass with rebuilding Foothill’s relationship with the surrounding community and with reinvigorating Neighborhood Watch groups in the crime-ridden northeast San Fernando Valley.

After the March, 1991, incident, morale among the rank and file in Foothill plummeted. But it has rebounded, according to many officers, who credit McBride’s sometimes unorthodox ideas for reaching out to the community.

In earlier interviews, McBride has described his approach as “smothering our enemies with love.”

McBride said Monday that community members would be invited to speak at morning roll call meetings at the station.

“We’ll let one person speak per morning and say anything they want for two minutes,” McBride said. “I don’t know what we’ll get, but we’ll give it a try.”

His advice to the newly assigned officers ranged from encouraging them to attend community meetings to “learning to smile” and telling citizens “thank you for your support.”

“It takes only two seconds, but you can really change the situation,” McBride said. “If they can touch you, hear you and feel you, it makes it all different. They realize you’re a person.”

McBride’s advice was echoed by Harris and the other two speakers, Latina activist Irene Tovar and Tom Weissbarth, head of a local branch of Graffiti Busters.

“Roll down your windows, it makes it easier for us to talk to you,” said Weissbarth, who also heads a Neighborhood Watch group in Sylmar. “I try to tell everybody it’s OK to wave at a police officer and tell them we appreciate you.”

But along with praising officers, Weissbarth said, it is equally important that residents feel comfortable criticizing them.

“We’re the customers. If we’re happy with what you do, that should have an impact on your career,” Weissbarth said. “If we’re not, we deserve to be heard.”

Weissbarth said he too has had run-ins with police. In college, he flagged down a police officer to tell him about a car that was abandoned behind his apartment.

“He kept his hand on his holster during the entire discussion,” Weissbarth said. “He looked like he was ready to shoot me. . . . That didn’t encourage me to support police.”

Tovar praised the efforts of Foothill officers to learn Spanish, because the division includes some of the fastest-growing Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles. She said she hopes to establish a Valley branch of Neighbor to Neighbor, a group formed to ease tensions in potential riot areas.

After the meeting, officers said they were impressed by citizens’ comments and McBride’s approach. “The captain is very resourceful. He really has his pulse on this community and the way it works,” said Sgt. Dan Honey, a 16-year department veteran. “I’ve always been a believer in the human side of police work. I’m glad to hear it from the top.”