Community Policing’s Non-Lethal Weapon : Zoning Regulations Have a Simple, Effective Impact

Chances are, a discussion of zoning rules and regulations will give you a sure case of the MEGOs, as in “My eyes glaze over.” That might not be the case once you take stock of the impact of zoning requirements as a tool of community-oriented policing here in the San Fernando Valley.

Our first example involves a North Hills motel operator who received a rather unusual order earlier this month. John J. Parker Jr., an associate zoning administrator for the city of Los Angeles, imposed 27 conditions on the motel, including orders to reduce prostitution, drug use and incidents that result in calls for police service. The owner was given six months to comply with the new conditions, or risk closure of his motel.

Under Parker’s order, the motel operator must also provide a 24-hour security guard, prohibit drug and alcohol abuse on his premises and join a local motel watch association.

Parker’s order was the result of an LAPD study of operations at the motel, which had found a more than twofold increase in the number of police calls to the motel based on complaints involving prostitution, drug use, robbery and car theft. It was that study, combined with numerous complaints from the hotel’s neighbors to the office of Valley City Councilman Joel Wachs, that led to the zoning hearing.

“Hopefully they’ll be able to be good neighbors” in the future, said an aide to Wachs. Zoning official Parker added: “The message is, they have to clean up their operation. They have to be very rigorous about avoiding an appearance of supporting any activities including prostitution or drug activity,” Parker said.

LAPD officers have now been encouraged to track other types of land-use cases on their beats, says Sgt. Dan Hoffman, and they have been attending workshops on zoning rules. One result is a step that ought to be used with some caution when the situation involves new requests for liquor licenses in areas where there are already large concentrations of businesses with such permits.

Los Angeles police, for example, are seeking to appeal the granting of such a permit to a Reseda store in a particularly high crime area. The permit had been allowed this past summer by another city zoning administrator, and there would seem to be some cause for reconsideration here.

The Reseda shop is located in a census tract with four off-site liquor outlets and 13 businesses that have on-site permits to sell liquor by the drink. That’s far above the ABC definition of saturation for a census tract, according to the LAPD’s West Valley vice section. That raises a question as to why another conditional-use permit was allowed in the first place.

In Pacoima, recently, it was Parker again who took similar facts into consideration in denying a conditional-use liquor permit for a Van Nuys Boulevard restaurant. He acted after police, neighbors and City Councilman Richard Alarcon noted the existing heavy concentration of liquor outlets along that avenue.

In the case of a Woodland Hills restaurant that had been the site of brawls and frequent liquor sales to minors last year, police sought and won the revocation of its permit to sell liquor. That is perhaps the best example of efforts that combine community-oriented policing with a reasonable use of city ordinances and zoning laws.