Program Aims to Bring Police and Community Closer Together : Crime: LAPD officer in Pacoima is paid by grant intended to encourage prevention and long-term problem solving.

Officer Hank Stockdale of the Los Angeles Police Department is paid from a $4-million federal grant designed to help bring peace to urban war zones.

But the price of the framed picture of John Wayne--so far the only decoration in his week-old Pacoima office--came out of his own pocket.

“I have no illusions about being the new sheriff in town,” said Stockdale, a 6-foot, 200-pound mustachioed blond who nonetheless looks and acts the part. “But if I can make a difference, then I’m 100% successful.”

Stockdale’s new job is to bring the department closer to the community it serves--in this case, a largely Latino neighborhood that surrounds a rough stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard east of the Golden State Freeway.

He is one of 54 officers who will be working citywide, using grant money the Clinton Administration has awarded to financially strapped cities. The two-year grant, which is augmented by $9 million in city funds, is intended to encourage community-based policing, which emphasizes prevention and long-term problem solving.

“We need to place police officers in places where they can more closely interact and get feedback from the community,” said Sgt. Ron Tingle of the LAPD’s Office of Operations, which coordinated the grant.

Stockdale’s new duties will include regular office hours at a Van Nuys Boulevard storefront from 9 to 11 a.m., Monday through Friday. The rest of the day, Stockdale meets with local shop owners and patrols the streets in his black-and-white.

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Although the new job frees him from the obligation to respond to radio calls, Stockdale, like most officers, usually wants to swing by to see what is going on, especially if the call is close enough and interesting enough.

And in this part of the Valley, there is no shortage of interesting calls--for police, anyway.

The neighborhood, patrolled by the Foothill Division, ranks as one of the poorest and least educated in the San Fernando Valley. Although the overall per-capita crime rate in the division fell between 1981 and 1992, the area is among the Valley’s worst for homicides and aggravated assault.

It lags behind other Valley police divisions in the number of robberies and burglaries, perhaps because its widespread poverty makes other communities more attractive to thieves.

The economic options for many here range from welfare to minimum-wage jobs.

About one-third of adults in the adjoining communities of Pacoima and Arleta have less than a ninth-grade education, according to the 1990 U.S. Census. About one-quarter speak little or no English. More than one-third of the area’s residents are not U.S. citizens; 70% are Latino.

Entrepreneurial choices on this part of Van Nuys Boulevard include selling aluminum cans to Tony’s Recycling Center at 92 cents a pound and selling pea-sized bits of street-corner cocaine for the equivalent of $44,000 a pound.

Drug dealing is a lure that accounts for at least half the area’s crime, Stockdale said.

It’s almost impossible to catch burglars--often drug addicts--who are in and out of houses in a flash. But catch somebody in a drug deal and essentially you’ve caught a burglar the easy way, since many who steal are trying to support a $150- to $200-a-day drug habit, Stockdale said.

The street here is a mix of struggling retail stores, doughnut shops, liquor stores, restaurants, bars, car-repair shops and storefront churches. Bright banners announcing the 1994 World Cup Soccer hang from street lights, offering a splash of color.

During the day, Van Nuys Boulevard is busy. The sidewalks fill with pedestrians, mostly what Stockdale calls the area’s decent people.

At night, the same streets fill with predators, he said.

“My first goal is to start cleaning up Van Nuys Boulevard,” said the 28-year-old graduate of Granada Hills High School and Cal State Los Angeles. “If I work my ass off for three to six months, we’ll probably see a difference.”

He believes he was picked for the job because he is an aggressive self-starter, an officer who makes arrests and doesn’t need much supervision. Stockdale decided on police work while in high school after being angered by the 1983 shooting death of LAPD motorcycle officer Paul Verna in Pacoima.

He spent his day off last weekend painting the office, an 8-by-13-foot room located inside the Avtech language school at the Plaza del Sol shopping center.

During an afternoon patrol, Stockdale is constantly punching license plate numbers into his car computer--checking for stolen cars, cars with outstanding warrants, crooks on the lam. He checks the plates of expensive cars, which stand out in this poor neighborhood, as well as cars filled with teen-agers.

“What’s up?” he calls to three teen-age boys sitting on a couch that someone has left on the sidewalk. He asks where they got the expensive mountain bike. One boy says he bought it, he’s got a good job. “Doing what?” Stockdale wants to know. Cleaning planes at Van Nuys Airport, the boy says.

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Satisfied, Stockdale moves on. Punching in more license plates, stopping wherever youths are gathered in groups--to say hi, to ask questions and yell a little, sounding a lot like a stern father, even though he is at most 10 years older than those he questions.

He follows an older Toyota carrying two men that is taking a circuitous route through alleys and back streets and finally ends up at one of the few banks in the area. They turn out to be employees at a local gas station. Their boss, fearing robbery, orders his staff to take such a route when they deposit the day’s receipts.

Stockdale--who grew up in the Valley but like many fellow officers now lives about 50 miles away--took the job in part “to prove I was more than a gung-ho street cop.”

But he cannot resist a drive through San Fernando Gardens, a public-housing project where Latino gangs have taken control from black gangs, due largely to the changing demographics of the past decade.

Gonzalez Park, across the street, is a regular drug-buying area, where sellers can easily hide their wares under a clump of grass should they spy a police car.

Three teen-agers spot Stockdale’s car and turn to run. He accelerates through the parking lot and gives chase, but they have a head start and soon disappear into the housing complex. A group of older men watch and laugh.

“How long you think they’ll be running?” Stockdale yells.

He spins the car around the corner but the teen-agers are long gone. Instead, two youngsters wave and ask for baseball cards, which LAPD officers give away by the box load every spring.

“Up until they are about 8 years old, the kids here love the police,” Stockdale said. “After that, it’s not so cool to wave. . . . Some of these people are lost, but if we can get to the kids, get them started off right, they still have a chance to be a decent human being.”

In December, Stockdale himself became a father; his wife gave birth to a girl. The family lives in an 1,800-square-foot house in the mountains about 20 miles west of Lancaster.

At night, “It’s so quiet that the sound of the crickets and frogs is deafening,” Stockdale said. “That’s the way I like it.”