Volunteers Help Harbor Division Stay Above Water : Police: A project that trains civilians to assist the LAPD is lauded as a way to free officers from paperwork and put them back on the street.

On the third floor of the old San Pedro City Hall, civilian volunteers for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division are typing into computers information that detectives use to solve crimes.

The project is one of several tasks that more than 50 community volunteers have taken on for the Harbor Division to free officers so they can concentrate on fighting crime. The volunteers, ranging in age from 18 to 78 and trained in the ways of the Police Department, answer telephones, fill out follow-up reports and other tasks. Some accompany officers to spot graffiti taggers.

Praised by the LAPD administration, Mayor Richard Riordan and other officials, the Harbor Division volunteer program is keeping the division afloat. It’s the only program of its kind in the LAPD and is being eyed as a model for similar volunteer efforts.

“As in many instances when you bring outsiders into an organization, there is a certain amount of apprehension. In the beginning, the officers expressed their apprehension,” said Officer Wayne Zippi, coordinator of the program. “Now they’re begging, ‘Get us more volunteers!’ ”

Volunteers say the work has given them, and thus the community, a better appreciation for the police.

“I think you find the human side of the police and you see how hard they work,” said volunteer Jerri Dean of San Pedro, a retiree. “You see their frustrations over a battered child or when they think they’ve prepared a really good case and the prosecutor won’t prosecute.”

Under the Harbor Division volunteer effort, begun last October by Capt. Timothy King, volunteers work in areas ranging from the detectives division to the family violence unit, mostly in clerical positions.

So far, the volunteers have freed one full-time detective from desk work and contributed about 10,000 hours of labor, according to Lt. Alan Kerstein, commanding officer of the detective division. If they were being paid the $25-an-hour wage of an entry-level officer, their services would amount to $250,000 worth of time.

It is difficult to gauge what effect the free service has had on crime. Like other divisions, Harbor is understaffed, and volunteers are no replacement for sworn officers. But the volunteers do a myriad of tasks that allow officers to do better policing.

“One police report can generate a ton of paperwork,” said Officer Bill Arnado, who helped develop and runs the volunteer program. “Let’s say there’s a burglary report; then it goes to detectives who do a follow-up report and they run a make (background check). Then they go and interview neighbors and witnesses and there’s a report for every single person contacted.

“Then they might have to do a report for a photo lineup and another for a search warrant. Then they have to put everything in a package for the district attorney and then a lot of times the D.A. will ask for more reports,” Arnado said.

Much of the paperwork involved in such cases is now done by volunteers.

The help is sorely needed. Since 1980, the population of the Harbor area has grown by about 20% and crime has risen 33%. But the Harbor Division has had no staff increase in that time. Typically, four or five police cars patrol San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and Harbor Gateway.

For volunteers, the division’s huge work load was stunning.

“I was just totally shocked,” Dean said. “I had never been in an office that was so crowded and understaffed. . . . There were not even enough officers to take all the calls for car accidents. And people would probably be shocked if they could see a detective waiting for a car so he can go out on an investigation.”

The Harbor unit has had civilian volunteers for years. But never before have volunteers been required to undergo training before offering their services. The volunteers study the penal code, the police manual, even Police Department history. They learn how to take a police report and give first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. And they receive the same background checks that prospective officers do.

Of the 74 volunteers who completed the training, a core group of about 55 volunteer consistently.

“The training and background checks are so important because it helps them to be more readily accepted by the officers,” Arnado said.

Inglewood resident Toya Hackett, 24, juggles volunteering with a six-day work week at Pacific Bell. She grew up in San Pedro and has a bachelor’s degree in political science. And because she has taken numerous law enforcement-related college courses, the Harbor Division occasionally “loans” her to the downtown office.

But while the work is exciting, Hackett says she does not discuss her volunteer activities with friends. Since the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King, it’s unfashionable for anyone to openly support LAPD, she said. And Hackett says she would receive extra jeering because she is black.

“I don’t talk about it for the simple fact that LAPD’s reputation has really gone downhill since the Rodney King thing,” she said. “I have my own feelings on that, but I still have not actually lost respect for the Los Angeles Police Department because they work very, very hard.”

Dean has also learned firsthand about the long hours needed for police work. A housewife who worked part time now and then for the fun of it, she now logs 40- to 50-hour weeks at the department.

Encouraged by the performance of such volunteers as Hackett and Dean, the Harbor Division plans to train another volunteer class in January. Already, 80 people have signed up.

In the long run, the new approach to civilian involvement could allow a return to old-fashioned policing, Kerstein said.

“If every station had a cadre of volunteers, they’d be able to get more officers in the field to the extent where we would have the complement of 10,000 officers that (LAPD) needs,” Kerstein said. “Right now, officers never get to walk a foot beat and see that people really do like them. . . . They don’t get the brownies and the lemonade that kids make for you when you’re in their community all the time.”

But if the volunteer program has not put hundreds of officers on the streets, the volunteers themselves are assisting the department outside the building. Community volunteers in Wilmington and San Pedro have helped officers stake out areas frequented by taggers.

They are also helping to form a crisis response team for the division’s family violence unit. Between four and six female volunteers go to the division on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listen to the stories of battered women and urge them to press charges.

Esther Daily of Harbor Gateway holds a master’s degree in behavioral science and thought she would be happiest volunteering in the detectives division, but now says she is devoted to the family violence unit.

“I started doing follow-up reports and started seeing this whole world of battered women,” Daily said. “I have all these caseloads repeating. They call again and again,” she said, sighing.

Lou Luallin, also of Harbor Gateway, is the heart behind the new effort to put division records on computer. A retired truck driver, he had planned to spend his free time gardening. But nowadays he’s organizing information used to solve crimes and typing it into an IBM PC.

Last month, Luallin worked 153 hours on the computer project, and his wife Carol, who also volunteers in the Harbor Division, is not far behind.

“I thought that when I retired I’d see my (yard) becoming a picture-perfect postcard,” Luallin said. “Now I wade through my lawn on the way to the Police Department.”