Community Policing by Commuting Cops : Law enforcement: Only 18% of officers in O.C. live in cities they patrol. But does that matter?

Harold Mays remembers how life was as a police officer in Huntington Beach when he joined the department in 1944. The town was 2 1/2 square miles with a population of 5,000 and the whole Police Department--seven, counting the chief--lived within the city limits.

The officers shopped in local stores, sent their children to neighborhood schools, attended churches and identified with the charm and understood the problems of the community.

“We knew our neighbors and they knew us,” said Mays, 73, now retired and still a city resident. “We took more people home than we put in jail, unless of course it was a felony.”

But nowadays, Huntington Beach has 229 officers and only one out of three live in the city they serve. And that percentage is substantially higher than the Orange County average:

* Of the 2,631 sworn officers employed by 22 city police departments, only 18% live in the city where they work, according to a Times Orange County Edition survey.

* Another 26% don’t live in Orange County at all.

* Even among police chiefs the 18% county average holds--only four of the 22 chiefs live in their cities, although two more say they are soon to move.

At a time when police departments across the nation are searching for new ways to gain citizen cooperation and support, the residency statistics suggest that fewer Orange County officers have a personal stake in the neighborhoods they are paid to protect.

“I’m surprised at the low numbers,” said Arnold Binder, a professor who heads the UC Irvine department of criminology, law and society.

But because Orange County is a collection of cities that are predominantly suburban, Binder explained, “it’s less of a bad thing . . . (than) it would be in other areas where there are more differences between cities.”

Police officials concede they would like to see more officers live in the cities they patrol, but there are good reasons for the low numbers.

Still, people like Gene Dorney, 46, who lives in an oceanfront home in Newport Beach, said that having a police officer live nearby would bring definite advantages to his neighborhood.

“The more police presence, the less trouble you have because they’d definitely be part of the local network to keep an eye on the neighborhood,” Dorney said. “But it doesn’t surprise me that so few of them are my neighbors considering what it costs to live here.”

Last week, a group of 70 Orange County leaders who were assembled in the wake of the Los Angeles riots delivered a list of recommendations designed to head off that kind of unrest here. Chief among the proposals from the nonprofit Orange County Together was a call for more community policing, which they defined as “a service-oriented, problem-solving partnership between the law enforcement agencies and the community.” The group appealed for police to get closer to the neighborhoods they patrol.

While the need for more “community policing” was also a key recommendation made by the Christopher Commission, which investigated the 1991 beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police, both officials and residents say it that does not necessarily mean that officers must live in the communities they patrol.

As long as police are communicating with the people they serve and are keeping crime down, it should not matter where they live, said David Du Tran, whose family owns and operate the Little Saigon Supermarket in Westminster.

“If they live far away but still do a good job, it’s still all right,” he said. “We shouldn’t get picky and require them to live in the city.”

Fullerton Police Chief Patrick McKinley said all of his officers are expected to be absolutely committed to the people they are assigned to protect. In Fullerton, where there are 144 officers, 23% live in the city, 40% live elsewhere in Orange County and 37% live outside the county.

“Whether they live there or don’t live there shouldn’t be a concern. What living where you work does is cut down on the commute time. But as far as the ability to do your job, no, I don’t think it makes any difference at all,” he said.

Yet, some police officials say departments can gain much by having officers as local residents.

“The biggest disadvantage of not having your officers living here is their lack of community participation,” said Irvine Police Chief Charles S. Brobeck. While 80% of his force lives somewhere in Orange County, only 18% live in Irvine. Brobeck resides in nearby Mission Viejo.

“You have officers working odd schedules and are living completely out of the area, so they’re less likely to be involved in community events,” Brobeck said. “If they have kids, for example, they could get involved in Little League or Pop Warner football. They could go to church here. It all develops a much better relationship with the community.”

Police chiefs say the primary reason that few officers live in the cities they patrol is the high cost of housing. Although the recession has brought a slight price reduction in recent years, the average cost of a house in Orange County is still more than $240,000--among the highest in the nation.

And the average house costs nearly twice that in wealthy coastal cities like Newport Beach, where only 6% of the city’s 146 sworn officers live.

“It’s clearly an economic reason,” said Newport Beach acting Chief Jim Jacobs, who lives in Dana Point. “I think all our officers would like to live in Newport Beach. It’s a beautiful town. But they can get a lot more for their money if they move inland.”

The countywide average salary for a police officer is $47,388 annually, according to the Orange County Division of the League of California Cities. A survey of each department showed the average pay for police chiefs in the county is about $110,000.

Police officials say another reason that some officers live outside the cities they patrol has to do with safety.

Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters said it is unfair to expect police officers and their families to live in the same city where, on their days off, they might run into people they have arrested.

“The gangs deal in pay-back, revenge,” said Walters, who does not live in Santa Ana and would not specify where his residence is except to say that it is in Orange County. “If they are capable of so much violence, why would we think they wouldn’t hurt our children?”

Yet, Enrique Gonzalez, who rents a house in an area of Santa Ana plagued by gang problems and drug dealing, reacted with discomfort when told that only 17% of the 400 police officers who serve his city are also residents.

“They might do a better job if they lived here,” said Gonzalez, 31. “They don’t know what is happening around here.”

Neil J. Purcell Jr., police chief of Laguna Beach, said his family has suffered in several ways because he lives in the city. He said his children were beaten up in school and he can never get away from his job.

“We all like the ability to get away from our jobs,” Purcell said. “But there’s no such thing as me having a day off walking downtown without people coming up to talk police business.” Still, “it’s a nice feeling, though, to see people have respect for your position,” the chief concedes.

Purcell said he would like to have more of his officers live in Laguna Beach.

“I like the idea of the way it used to be when police officers lived in the community they policed,” Purcell said. “Because we then worked harder to form a partnership between the department and the community.”

“But I can’t blame other officers living outside Laguna Beach either,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they can’t be professional police officers when they are at work. It is stressed to them that this community comes first, no matter where they live.”

Becky Esparza, the co-chairwoman of Orange County Together, says officers living in the cities they patrol can sometimes feel uneasy, if not threatened, because of the nature of their jobs.

“It puts them in an awkward position in their neighborhoods,” said Esparza, a Stanton resident who also is the chairwoman of the Orange County Human Relations Commission. “It’s hard for them to be your friends and neighbors one day and have to be officers the next. It creates a strain on that bond of friendship.”

Ho Chung, a Garden Grove City Council member, also says it is unfair to expect officers to live among the people they serve.

“We are living in a mobile society,” said Chung, who is an insurance agent in Garden Grove. “We cannot force a particular group of people, the police officers, to live where they work.”

Ray Conners, 60, a real estate manager in La Palma, where none of that Police Department’s 24 officers live in the city, agreed with Chung.

“It would be a pretty hard requirement in such a small community as this to say they have to live here,” said Conners. “It would be a tough nut to crack.”

Irvine resident Richard R. Dempsey, 26, who works in an accounting office in Costa Mesa, said his father retired as a police officer and his brother is an officer on the East Coast. He said his father lived where he patrolled and his brother lives where he works. But he said he also does not think it should be a requirement.

“Commuting is part of life in Southern California,” he said. “I commute, everybody does. I don’t think it makes a difference for cops just as long as they know and care about the cities they work in.”

UCI professor Binder said the residence issue should turn mostly on the cultural diversity of a community.

“Communities here are generally the same,” he said. “You’d think that Santa Ana would be an important one because that’s a distinctive city, it’s more varied in culture. Officers need to work harder familiarizing themselves with that city.”

Art Montes, director of the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the largest Latino organization in the nation, said it is particularly important in a city like Santa Ana for officers to identify with residents of Latino neighborhoods. Latinos make up roughly 65% of the Santa Ana population.

One way to do that, Montes said, is for police departments to recruit more from within their cities so “they won’t be out of touch.”

Dorney of Newport Beach said he would like to see officers live where they police like it used to be. “But those days are not coming back,” he said.

Times staff writer David A. Avila and correspondent Geoff Boucher contributed to this report.

Where O.C. Police Live

Only four of Orange County’s 22 police chiefs live in the cities where they work. The average percentage of sworn officers who live in the cities they patrol is 18%.

Number % Living in % Living % Living of city where elsewhere outside City officers they work in O.C. O.C. Anaheim 351 27% 37% 36% Brea/Yorba Linda 105 29% 33% 38% Buena Park 85 14% 53% 33% Costa Mesa 139 17% 64% 19% Cypress 53 10% 75% 15% Fountain Valley 62 15% 74% 11% Fullerton 144 23% 40% 37% Garden Grove 165 39% 26% 35% Huntington Beach 229 33% 57% 10% Irvine 127 18% 80% 2% Laguna Beach 46 15% 74% 11% La Habra 63 16% 32% 52% La Palma 24 none 54% 46% Los Alamitos 25 4% 84% 12% Newport Beach 146 6% 91% 3% Orange 140 26% 66% 8% Placentia 51 12% 39% 49% San Clemente 50 50% 25% 25% Santa Ana 400 17% 63% 20% Seal Beach 33 3% 79% 18% Tustin 84 8% 74% 18% Westminster 109 12% 68% 20%

City: Where police chief lives Anaheim: Chief Joseph T. Molloy, outside O.C.* Brea/Yorba Linda: Acting Chief James E. Oman, Brea Buena Park: Chief Richard M. Tefank, Pomona Costa Mesa: Chief David L. Snowden, Orange County * Cypress: Chief Daryl Wicker, Whittier Fountain Valley: Chief Elvin Miali, Fountain Valley Fullerton: Chief Patrick McKinley, Long Beach ** Garden Grove: Chief Stanley L. Knee, Garden Grove Huntington Beach: Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg, Garden Grove *** Irvine: Chief Charles S. Brobeck, Mission Viejo Laguna Beach: Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr., Laguna Beach La Habra: Chief Steven Staveley, Anaheim La Palma: Chief David Barr, Placentia Los Alamitos: Chief James Guess, Yorba Linda Newport Beach: Acting Chief Jim Jacobs, Dana Point Orange: Chief John R. Robertson, Yorba Linda Placentia: Chief Manuel Ortega, Yorba Linda San Clemente: Acting Chief Paul Falk, Orange County * Santa Ana: Chief Paul M. Walters, Orange County * Seal Beach: Chief Bill Stearns, Orange County * Tustin: Chief W. Douglas Franks, Laguna Hills Westminster: Chief James Cook, Huntington Beach * Would not specify where for safety reasons.

** New to the post, is moving from Long Beach to Fullerton.

*** Is buying a home in Huntington Beach.

Source: Individual police departments

Researched by THUAN LE / Los Angeles Times