EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK : Officers Put Others First in Quake’s Call to Duty : Police: Leaving behind their own damaged homes and shaken families, LAPD personnel aid communities ravaged by temblor.

They bolted to work despite broken bones and broken houses; some even left wives in the throes of labor.

While everyone else still reeled, they sped along buckled freeways in the pre-dawn darkness. One answered the call so fast he drove his motorcycle off the severed Golden State Freeway to his death. Another hobbled to work on glass-shredded feet, only seeking medical help two days later when he could no longer put his shoes on.

Since those first horrible moments after the earthquake brought the region to its knees, the officers of the Los Angeles Police Department have put their own personal disasters, anguishes and fears on hold.

With their homes in disarray, their routes to work blocked and their offices trashed, the LAPD has been coping with the business of fighting crime as best it can.

Looting, luckily, has been minimal, and so have most other crimes--less than 300 arrests were made last week citywide, police said. But for all the LAPD personnel deployed in the field--including those usually sitting at desks and doing plainclothes detective work--there have been other problems and responsibilities.

For 12 hours at a stretch, they have roamed demolished areas and prohibited insistent tenants from entering unsafe buildings. They have directed endless rows of traffic and endured the rantings of frustrated motorists. Several even helped deliver a baby in a Reseda park, LAPD officials said, while others made sure donated food got to hungry mouths and applicants for federal aid behaved themselves.

And, of course, police engaged in the general business of crime-fighting during the long week. Then, many got in their cars for a four-hour commute home to the northern reaches of the county, and turned around the next morning to do it all over again.

“Every time a tragedy occurs, the firefighters are the heroes, and the cops are the forgotten ones,” said one sergeant. “But we are dedicated. We do care. When that battle cry was broadcast, those officers were there.”

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Officer Sean Meade was with his wife as she was in labor in the delivery room at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills. Then the lights went off at 4:31 a.m. Monday and the building shuddered.

After making sure she was all right, Meade, 28, rushed to the Devonshire Police Station and reported for duty. He was one of the first on scene at a Northridge apartment building where at least 16 people died, keeping vigil and helping rescued tenants.

“Leaving your wife behind when she was about to have a baby, that was real tough,” Meade said Friday. “But I felt I had to be here, to help the city. It is at those moments when we are needed most.”

Officer Yehuda Packer did the same thing--leaving his wife as she was about to go into labor to report for duty. His house too was heavily damaged.

Police are required to respond immediately in times of disaster.

And when they got to Valley police stations Monday morning, that is just what they found. Meade said that in the pitch blackness, all the lockers at the Devonshire station were overturned, the phones were down and there was no water. He spent 90 minutes helping others dig out police radios and other equipment from underneath piles of rubble so officers could grab them.

The Devonshire station, located near the quake epicenter, was without power for a time, and without water for several days. Other Valley stations also were without water and power for part of the week.

Deputy Police Chief Martin H. Pomeroy, who commands all Valley police, said the interiors of the Van Nuys station and Valley police headquarters were upended but none of the five Valley Division police stations suffered major structural damage. “Devonshire took a beating,” Pomeroy said, “but all of them were severely impacted.”

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Downtown, police headquarters at Parker Center was also hit hard. Those officers first on scene found broken pipes and glass, water damage--and darkness.

“The first day was rough,” Officer Art Holmes said. The phones were not functioning, the lights were out, people were afraid to traverse darkened hallways and elevators. “You couldn’t even get into your uniform unless you had a light,” he said. “It was definitely not business as usual.”

For police, commutes have been far from business as usual too.

Many Los Angeles officers live in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, areas cut off from Los Angeles by broken freeways. One LAPD civilian employee from Santa Clarita described the harried scramble to work Monday as “the drive from hell.”

“If I could have, I would have quit that day,” she said, asking that she not be identified. “I got up at 3, left at 4 a.m. and got home at 1:30 the next morning. Then I got up two hours later and did it again. And I’ll be doing that for the next week.”

By Friday, police were beginning to patch up the stations. Officers also had begun inspecting their damaged homes and trying to solve commuting problems.

The department has made arrangements so that officers can take the Metrolink train from Santa Clarita to Burbank, where police buses pick them up and transfer them to their stations by 6 a.m. At night, they are taken back in time to catch the evening train home.

Still, many others must drive. Some, police officials say, have been ferried home during some emergencies by helicopter.

But from the beginning, the officers made it to work whatever way they could, and in whatever condition.

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Officer Raquel Duarte, 26, remembers her Granada Hills apartment convulsing, and then digging out from the rubble with her boyfriend. “When we finally got out, I checked on my sister who lives down the street, and then I came in to work,” said Duarte, who works at Foothill Division. When she returned Tuesday night, she found that the building had been condemned.

“I lost pretty much everything,” she said. “I’ve been living out of a bag.”

Officer Dan Taylor, who patrols the Devonshire district, has worked through the week too, even though he also lost his Granada Hills townhouse and everything in it. “I live out of a suitcase,” he said. “It’s hard on you.”

Detective Tim Whisenhunt has been coming to work with a broken wrist suffered in the quake, and returning home to a battered house. He didn’t go to the hospital until Tuesday because no broken bones were protruding through his skin, and the hospitals were swamped. His house, the pipes and the garage are damaged, and the place may have to be condemned. But he won’t be there this weekend when the structural engineer comes. He’ll be working.

There are no statistics on how many police lost homes, or were injured.

Of the 100 officers in the LAPD’s Van Nuys earthquake command post, 70 reported damaged homes, some of the damage “very significant,” police said. One in five had injuries.

“It seems kind of odd,” Sgt. John Herkowitz said. “They’re out here helping everyone else, when they need help themselves.”

Sgt. Dennis Zine, who now works for the police union, agreed. “We all have those feelings, emotions and that fear,” he said. “But we all have been there on the line, doing what we have to do.”

Sgt. Paul McMillan, logistics officer at the LAPD earthquake command post in Van Nuys, said “quite a few” officers have destroyed or damaged homes. What McMillan didn’t say is that when the quake hit, he ran through his house barefoot, crunching broken glass in the darkness, said Herkowitz, who works with him in the command post.

“He wiped the blood off, pulled out the glass and came to work,” Herkowitz said. “By the third day, the swelling got so bad he couldn’t put his shoes on, so he went to the doctor. Then he came right back to work, and this is where he’s stayed.”

McMillan also suffered significant damage to his house, Herkowitz said.

“Everybody’s getting real tired,” Herkowitz said, “but they are still showing up.”

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By Friday, some Valley detectives were returning to their caseloads. Other officers from throughout the force continued to pitch in, with help from the National Guard and county sheriffs.

There has been an upside to all this self-sacrifice by police; some in the community have taken notice.

“They have been doing a heroic job in a time of crisis,” said Eric Rose, Valley Councilwoman Laura Chick’s liaison to the Police Department.

“For the first time since March 3, 1991, since the Rodney King incident, officers are experiencing a warm feeling from the public,” Rose said. “As they drive down the street in their black and whites, they say, they are getting waves and thumbs up from people. And that hasn’t happened in several years.”