It’s Not Just Talk as Valley Prepares for the Verdicts : King case: Dialogue sessions are common, but rooftop surveillance teams have also formed.

Though the San Fernando Valley was largely spared when violence spread through the city last April, police, residents and community leaders there have been quietly but anxiously bracing for the worst as they wait for the end of the second Rodney G. King beating trial.

In churches and police stations, from Spartan school auditoriums to art-laden professional offices on Ventura Boulevard, the Valley--as the rest of the city--has been wondering what will happen, and what it should do, if a federal jury acquits the four Los Angeles police officers on trial for the March 3, 1991, beating.

Much of the preparation has involved simply airing fears and frustrations in 1960s-style dialogue sessions, some directed by Mayor Tom Bradley’s 3-month-old Neighbor-to-Neighbor program and others by a street-savvy aide to Congressman Howard L. Berman, Rose Castaneda, whose ongoing work with gang members helped keep the peace last year.

But some in the Valley are also organizing volunteer communications networks and binocular-equipped surveillance teams aimed at tipping off authorities to unusual activity before events get out of control.

Ironically, it is residents and business leaders in the more affluent West Valley who are taking the quasi-vigilante approach, while those in the sprawling central and East Valley--where the handful of looting and burning incidents erupted last year--are emphasizing the power of talking things out.

“People up here talk,” said Lew Snow, president of the Lake View Terrace Homeowners Assn. “We network--we’ve been doing it for 8 million years, and we’ve been able to take care of a lot of problems before they become problems.”

Though the King beating took place in Lake View Terrace and the officers’ acquittals last year prompted a large demonstration there, Snow said his group has been doing little except staying abreast of the second trial and keeping in touch with neighborhood police.

Snow, whose group represents 14,000 residents, said he is confident “the police will be much, much more prepared to jump on anything quickly.”

That, at least, is what the police are telling residents and merchants in gatherings across the Valley.

In one such meeting last week, Officer Stephanie Tisdale of the West Valley Division frankly told an audience of 900 people at Sutter Junior High School in Winnetka that the Los Angeles Police Department had no riot plan last year. Then she described the department’s readiness this year, and urged listeners not to take the law into their own hands.

“You can’t kill someone to protect your property,” Tisdale said later, adding that her large audience was drawn not only by concern about more rioting but by crime in general. “I don’t want this vigilante attitude to be running rampant in the West Valley.”

This time around, the police have a detailed, written plan for riot control, have put officers through two days of intensive training at the Police Academy, and will shift into an everyone-on-call mode when the jury begins its deliberations, said Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker, the Valley’s top police official.

Every working officer will be deployed in uniform in highly visible areas, Kroeker continued, and pre-planned mobile units will go from “hot spot” to “hot spot” in an effort to quash violence before it spreads. In addition, the department has stocked up on rubber bullets, tear gas and other non-lethal weapons it lacked last year, Kroeker said.

Never one to rely on police brawn alone, Kroeker also said he is thinking of organizing a “Hands Across the Valley” event and said that 7-Eleven stores have begun distributing red-white-and-blue “Peace On Our Streets” ribbons to promote the idea of unity.

“Right now, the whole idea is to maintain a semblance of calm, clear-headed thinking and to be prudent and wise and ready the best we can,” he said.

Despite efforts by police to build public confidence, interest is growing in private security firms, said Thomas Wathen, chairman and chief executive officer of Pinkerton Security and Investigation Services, which is based in Van Nuys.

“All our 17 offices in Southern California have experienced a significant increase in inquiries,” Wathen said. “It’s on people’s minds and tongues as I go out to lunch and meetings and things like that.”

Fears of post-trial violence prompted the Encino Chamber of Commerce to organize volunteers in Encino, Sherman Oaks and Tarzana who will stand on rooftops with binoculars and their own cellular phones so they can alert the police.

The chamber’s president-elect, Stephen N. Getzoff, said the measure doesn’t constitute vigilantism because “they won’t be armed, first of all, and secondly, what we are attempting to do is be the eyes and ears of the police, not block traffic or stand in the street with our own Uzis.”

Getzoff, an accountant and reserve officer, said he hopes the effort will evolve into an ongoing, citizens crime-control program.

Looking beyond the King trial is also a goal of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program, which has been sending teams of volunteers door-to-door, asking people to fill out surveys giving their opinions on the major problems facing the city.

Once someone fills out a survey, he or she is encouraged to attend discussion groups that emphasize talking out frustrations about crime, unemployment and other urban ills--and maybe helping a neighbor with a problem--instead of angrily acting out. Participants are also being urged to keep their children off the streets once verdicts are announced, and to organize a “happy event” in their neighborhood--like a barbecue or softball game--to keep people occupied before the verdict is announced.

That’s what Berman’s administrative assistant, Castaneda, plans to do with the Wednesday Night Regulars, the group of current and past gang members who meet regularly at David M. Gonzalez Park in Pacoima. Last year, members of Wednesday Night Regulars were credited with guarding neighborhood businesses and saving them from looting and burning.

“We’re hoping we can create a fun atmosphere, a happy atmosphere, to take people’s minds off the verdict,” Castaneda said.

“We don’t talk about the possibility of riots,” she continued. “What we talk about is the assurance that we’re not going to riot. Our discussions are based around positives--that if there is destruction, they’ll be the victims. That if we burn the market down here, where is Mom going to shop? This is our neighborhood, our market.”

In a similar line of thinking, churches and synagogues are planning to open their doors after the King verdicts are read to give people a place to go to talk, said Barry Smedberg, executive director of the Valley Interfaith Council.

For weeks now, Smedberg said, clergy have addressed the King beating trial and other sensitive, volatile issues from their pulpits in an effort to keep congregants from storing up rage and fear.

Not giving in to panic is also the strategy of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, the umbrella group that represents 10,000 businesses. The group’s president, Robert L. Scott, said calmly that it is doing nothing in particular to prepare for possible violence.

“We trust the legal system and we trust the people in our community, so we don’t think there’s going to be a problem,” Scott said.

“We’re more worried about the people who are panicking, and making all these panicked statements, than we are about people doing anything.”

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