Finding Middle Ground : New Council to Act as Bridge Between Deputies, Community

Michelle Marquez, who normally sells toys in La Mirada, ordered the van in front of her patrol car to pull over on a recent night. She approached the van with her gun drawn.

Nearing the driver’s door, she hesitated--wondering what to do next. She did not notice the gunman creeping around the back of the van until it was too late.

Marquez paid for her indecision with her--well, with her dignity.

She was taking part in a computer simulation designed to test the mettle of sheriff’s cadets in potentially dangerous situations. But she is no would-be deputy.

Marquez and 14 others entered the simulator as part of a training program required before they could join a new community council that will address neighborhood concerns about law enforcement in unincorporated South Whittier. The training is supposed to make members more knowledgeable mediators by exposing them to law enforcement from the deputy’s side of the badge.

“We’re doing something that’s never been tried before,” said Sgt. Mike Pippin, who organized the program with Deputy Tom Ctibor. “We’re letting average citizens see inside the organization because we want them to represent us with a firm grasp on what it’s like to be a policeman. When someone approaches them with a complaint about us, this committee will be able to answer accurately with firsthand knowledge.”

Pippin and Ctibor, who donated their time, said they hope this liaison council will tackle gang and crime problems in an area where many residents speak little English and some distrust deputies almost as much as they fear criminals. Deputies sometimes face verbal hostility. At other times, they encounter apathy, with residents rarely reporting the gang activity they witness, community members said.

South Whittier liaison council members are the first to go through the training regimen. The program may be adopted countywide, said Capt. Norm Smith, commander of the Norwalk sheriff’s station.

“I think the program’s got a great future,” Smith said.

Liaison council members attended law enforcement training classes similar to those given deputy cadets, rode along on patrols, came muzzle to muzzle with a canine cop and toured the Sheriff’s Department heliport at Long Beach Airport.

In the computer simulator, Marquez and the others experienced the difficulties of knowing when to shoot and when not to. The simulator projects a variety of filmed scenarios on a small movie screen. Events unfold on the screen based on the actions of the person in the simulator.

In her simulation, Marquez approached the van too cavalierly and did not shoot in time to save herself. And she was not the only one.

“About half were shot or stabbed, including the guy who drove me up there. He ‘died,’ ” said Joe Hohn, chairman of the liaison committee.

As for most of the survivors, “Some killed the wrong people or shot after the suspect was wounded and had dropped the gun,” Hohn said.

Professionals do not always make the right choices, either. “The expectation of our professionalism is out there,” Sgt. Pippin said, “but people have still got to understand how our lives are touched by a routine traffic stop that turns deadly.”

On real ride-alongs, council members came to no harm, but they experienced the frustrations of police work.

“These deputies have the patience of Job because they are talked to so horribly,” said Jean Wall, a retired department store manager. “The deputies will just smile and answer nicely. I would want to be a Dirty Harry and let them have it.”

Some residents, however, said deputies sometimes contribute to antagonism.

Butch Redman, a substitute teacher and community activist, said he has witnessed deputies verbally abuse neighborhood youths. Once he saw a deputy needlessly strike a juvenile suspect, he said.

If law enforcement officers policed themselves better, a council might not be needed, said Angel Cabral, another community activist, who repairs forklifts. “There are a lot of good sheriff’s deputies, but it takes only the bad 2% to make them all look bad,” Cabral said.

Deputy Ctibor acknowledged that “there are officers out there who have no business being in law enforcement,” he said. “We’re trying to recognize those problems and deal with them.”

In sections of South Whittier, some residents just will not call to report crimes or cooperate in investigations.

Many come from Mexico and, based on that experience, believe “that all the cops are crooked,” Cabral said. “And they don’t want to go through the court procedure and become a witness because of the retaliation factor.” A shortage of Spanish-speaking officers also hampers communication and trust.

Some residents said that their neighborhoods have far too few deputies on patrol.

Unincorporated South Whittier has only three patrol cars for an estimated 65,000 residents, a much smaller law enforcement presence than surrounding cities. South Whittier has no city budget to hire additional deputies.

In December, deputies responded to 45 burglaries, 17 assaults and 34 auto thefts. Most of the crime is concentrated in a handful of neighborhoods that rank among the more gang-plagued in the county, officials said.

An estimated 1,000 gang members reside in South Whittier, officials said. In the first nine months of last year, detectives linked South Whittier gangs to four homicides and 15 drive-by shootings.

“On my street in the last six months there have been so many break-ins and robberies that the police just come and take a report and go on to the next report,” Cabral said. “We should have them patrolling to prevent the robberies.”

Deputies concede that they are understaffed in the area. They said they hope the liaison council will help by involving the community in crime prevention and reporting.

In addition to undergoing training, members of the liaison council agreed to serve at least a year. Members cannot establish or change Sheriff’s Department policy, but their suggestions could lead to such changes.

Liaison councils have been set up in other neighborhoods but have never been open to all comers, Capt. Smith said. Even adult gang members would have been considered for the South Whittier group, but none applied, Smith said.

The group includes an engineer, a schoolteacher, a private investigator, a handyman, a housewife and a retiree. Members range in age from about 30 to 60.

“A lot of these people are hopefully people who don’t agree with what we do,” Smith said. “We’re looking for outside help, not rubber-stamp people.”

By that yardstick, the liaison group is not diverse enough, said Redman and Cabral.

“I support them,” Redman said, “but I’m trying to get them to get a better cross-section.”

Redman and Cabral said other personal commitments left them with too little time to join the council. They added, however, that other candidates should be found, particularly from the poor, gang-plagued, heavily Latino neighborhoods.

The liaison group--known officially as the Whittier County Sheriffs/Community Advisory Council--goes on the firing line at 7 p.m. Thursday, when members convene their first public meeting.

The council will meet in an auditorium at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, 16200 E. Amber Valley Drive. After the first meeting, the council plans to meet on the second Monday of every month, alternating between the chiropractic college, in eastern South Whittier, and the South Whittier Intermediate School auditorium, near the area’s western boundary.

The council’s goal will be to keep residents and deputies feeling that they are on the same side. Residents and deputies agree that teamwork is needed.

After a holiday lull, deputies report that gang violence has recently escalated. On Jan. 25, a carload of alleged gang members assaulted two 15-year-olds on their way to the barbershop. One youth escaped with a bullet hole through his jacket. The other was beaten almost senseless and left with a gunshot wound in the foot and a footprint on his face.

On Jan. 29, a suspected gang member stabbed the leg of a 48-year-old man who was playing with children in his front yard.

Council member Marquez, a 31-year-old mother of four, lives on the same street where gunmen shot and killed an alleged gang member last fall. On a recent weekend, she heard six gunshots rapidly fired just outside her house.

This violence is no computer-generated simulation.

“This area I live in has gone to no good,” Marquez said. She joined the council because “I’m just sick of it all. If I can get out and help, I’d like to do that.”