Valley’s Deputy Chief Will Head Police in South L. A. : Transfer: Mark A. Kroeker is lauded for restoring faith in the beleaguered department.

Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker, a peacemaker praised for implementing community policing programs and restoring faith in the heavily criticized department, will leave his post as the San Fernando Valley’s top cop next week to assume command of LAPD operations in South Los Angeles.

In announcing the transfer late Wednesday, Police Chief Willie L. Williams said he wanted Kroeker to duplicate his success with community-based policing in the Valley in some of Los Angeles’ toughest inner-city neighborhoods.

“Throughout his career, Chief Kroeker has displayed a commitment to community service, and has worked diligently to forge a partnership between police and Valley residents to address the area’s very important public safety needs,” Williams said in a prepared statement.

Kroeker, 49, begins the latest assignment in his 29-year LAPD career Monday, filling a vacancy left six months ago by the retirement of Deputy Chief Matthew Hunt. He will be replaced in the Valley by newly appointed Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy, 47, a 24-year veteran who has been the department’s employee relations administrator.

Kroeker said Wednesday that he regretted leaving because he has many strong ties in the Valley, but understood Williams’ reasons for assigning him to South Los Angeles, where residents’ mistrust of police still runs deep 2 1/2 years after the Rodney G. King beating.

“It’s tearing me up in many ways,” Kroeker said of his transfer. “But I also recognize that when the chief tells me, ‘We need you in this bureau for these specific reasons,’ you gotta take the department perspective.”

Valley leaders were quick Wednesday to mourn his departure, praising the affable Kroeker for putting a human face on the department in the aftermath of the videotaped King beating. He managed to gain the trust of minorities, they said, while at the same time improved foundering officer morale.

He “earned the respect of just about everyone who came into contact with him, whether they were in the business community, the homeowners community, or the rank and file of the Police Department,” said attorney Benjamin Reznik, chairman of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., which honored Kroeker last year.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the southwest Valley, said civilians responded well to Kroeker because he came across as a “loving, caring human being” rather than a tough cop.

When Kroeker appealed to people to work with the police, Chick and others said, they inevitably cooperated, whether it was to donate the money for Spanish classes, jot down the license-plate numbers of suspected drug dealers or volunteer on weekends to clean up graffiti.

“He had a wonderful ability to reach out to people and tap the best in them, to make them want to be part of the solution,” Chick said.

The son of Mennonite missionaries, Kroeker took command of the Valley’s five patrol areas and 1,500 LAPD officers in March, 1991, a week after King was beaten in Lake View Terrace in the northwestern Valley. Hostility between the public and police was at an all-time high, but Kroeker quickly impressed blacks and Latinos by listening to their concerns and keeping his promises.

“He told us certain things he was going to do and he did just that,” recalled the Rev. Curry McKinney, leader of the largely African-American Ministers Fellowship of the San Fernando Valley and Vicinity (formerly known as the Valley Ministers Alliance).

Kroeker brought more minorities to Valley police stations, especially the Pacoima-based Foothill Division in which the King beating took place. He put black and Latino officers in supervisory positions as well as patrol cars. He made sure that there were Spanish speakers at every front desk to greet the public, and soon set up the pilot community policing project that would seal his reputation.

An increasingly popular style of law enforcement, community policing emphasizes crime prevention and working with civilians. Kroeker assigned 30 officers--six from each patrol area--to spend their time meeting with residents and merchants, and organizing more Neighborhood Watch groups, rather than responding to radio calls.

Kroeker also began holding news conferences whenever there was a violent or high-profile crime; he sent out surveys on the quality of police service, and he created a cable TV show to acquaint Valley residents with their neighborhood police and urge them to phone in crime tips.

When the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith complained about acts of anti-Semitism, he established an “emergency response team” to contact the victims of hate crimes.

When Latinos said many recent immigrants in the East Valley feared deportation by police, Kroeker agreed that more patrol officers there should speak Spanish and he set up language classes at the Foothill station.

Today, plans are under way for similar classes at all Valley police stations, said Latina activist Irene Tovar, who served on Kroeker’s Spanish Language Outreach Committee.

Tovar choked back tears Wednesday when she heard that Kroeker was leaving.

“There hasn’t been a time I’ve gone to him on an issue in the community that he hasn’t sat with us, talked with us, made whatever commitment, that he hasn’t followed through on,” said Tovar, executive director of the Latin American Civic Assn.

Although some veteran officers criticized his efforts as self-serving public relations, the Valley began seeing a kinder, gentler side to law enforcement and Kroeker’s name became known as no mid-level police bureaucrat’s before him.

“If you asked me who was deputy chief before him in the Valley, I wouldn’t know,” Reznik said. “He’s made himself known, he’s made himself available, and I think that we definitely benefited.”

Born in Oregon and raised in Europe and the Belgian Congo, Kroeker joined the LAPD in 1965 after flunking out of college. He later returned to school at Cal State and USC, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. A resident of Newhall with his wife Diane and the father of three now-grown children, he worked his way up the LAPD bureaucracy and last year became one of six finalists to succeed retiring Chief Daryl F. Gates.

During his candidacy for chief, rank-and-file officers responding to a union survey picked Kroeker as their top choice to succeed Gates. But although he won 42% of the union vote, Kroeker and four other Los Angeles police officials lost the appointment to Williams, a former Philadelphia police commissioner who implemented community policing on a department-wide basis there.

Although he is white--an unofficial strike against him during the search for Gates’ successor--Kroeker’s track record and easygoing manner should serve him well in South Los Angeles, Valley admirers said.

“The personality he has, the understanding he has of people, I think he’ll do a fine job,” said McKinney, who is black.

“When he gets together with ministers down there and community leaders, I think you’ll see a tremendous change down there in South-Central,” McKinney said.