Fewest Officers--4%--Live in Central L.A. : Law enforcement: Those who do say roots in the community make them better cops. But more important than where they live, the South Bureau commander says, is where their hearts lie.

Police Lt. Thomas (Reggie) Maeweather grew up in Central Los Angeles and still lives in the area, and he believes that he is a better officer because of it.

Maeweather, 46, commander of the detective detail at the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Division, attended 75th Street Elementary School and graduated from nearby Fremont High. He and other officers who live in the area say it makes them more sensitive to the people they serve and has helped them better understand how poverty, broken families and desperation have pushed many residents into a life of crime.

“Certainly, I can understand it just by living in the community and having grown up and seen it,” said Maeweather. A 19-year department veteran, he stresses that he is no apologist for those who break the law but is aware of the root causes behind many illegal activities.

The issue of police residency was thrust into the local spotlight with the recent release of an American Civil Liberties Union report finding that only 17% of the Police Department’s 7,658 sworn officers live in the city. The smallest concentration was in Central Los Angeles, home to 304 officers--or a scant 4% of the force. An additional 34 officers live in several Southeast Los Angeles County cities.

ACLU officials contend that the residency patterns, coupled with factors such as the slow pace of police reforms, bolster longstanding beliefs that the LAPD is an occupying army with little connection to the communities it serves. The ACLU recommends that the city provide salary incentives, rental subsidies or special mortgage loan programs to attract officers to the city.

“We are not so naive as to say that residency patterns are the only issue that contributes to this isolation pattern, but they are part of the problem,” said ACLU spokesman Allan Parachini.

Department officials dispute the ACLU’s findings.

“To assume that an officer is less committed based on the location of the residence, in my view, is a quantum leap,” said Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, commander of the department’s South Bureau, which covers much of South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles. “I don’t care where your bed is. I care where your heart is.”

In its report, the ACLU charted residency patterns from ZIP codes supplied by the department for all its sworn officers. The findings showed that the vast majority of officers reside outside the city and that many are concentrated in largely white, suburban communities in the Antelope Valley, West San Fernando Valley and Ventura County.

Of the 304 officers who live in Central Los Angeles, 71 are in the area that includes the middle-class communities of Baldwin Hills, View Park and Ladera Heights. Another 32 reside in a roughly 6 1/2-mile strip of South-Central bordering the Harbor Freeway between Slauson Avenue and El Segundo Boulevard. The rest are scattered across the area, including 23 officers in Northeast Los Angeles.

Lt. Kenny Garner, who owns a home just blocks from the Wilshire Division station where he works, says living in the community is a distinct advantage, especially since the Police Department has pledged to move toward community-based policing. Garner says he has more incentive to find solutions to local crime problems and has a better understanding of residents’ concerns.

“It makes a big difference,” said Garner, 38, a 16-year veteran who supervises the day patrol watch and a special community-based policing unit assigned to a high-crime area in West Adams. “I think it just gives me a different perspective on policing and how I would like to see policing in the community.”

For Garner, the choice to live in Mid-City was easy: He liked the ethnic diversity of the area, his home was reasonably priced and it is in the Wilshire Division. Until recently, he was assigned to the department’s South Bureau headquarters near USC.

“When I came to Wilshire Division, I knew firsthand what the problems were,” said Garner, who has lived at his home near Washington Boulevard and La Brea Avenue since 1986.

Garner, who grew up in South-Central, lived near 76th Street and Harvard Boulevard for a year while he was a patrol officer in the Southwest and 77th Street divisions in the late 1970s.

Maeweather, a View Park homeowner, says his community connections have helped his investigations. “When you need information, you don’t have to build relationships. You already have a connection with the community.”

Maeweather added that being from the community can also be a psychological advantage for an officer.

“I think there’s less of a sense of paranoia. I think people who grow up or live in the community tend to be more trusting. The fear factor isn’t as great,” said Maeweather, whose parents still live in the 77th Division area and who attends Faithful Central Missionary Baptist Church on Hoover Street. “You’re not an outsider.”

To be sure, Maeweather and others point out, growing up or living in a community is no guarantee that a police officer will be more sensitive or responsive to residents’ needs.

“Being committed has nothing to do with where you live,” said Detective Gilbert Escontrias, who grew up in the rough Maravilla and Ramona Gardens housing projects on the Eastside.

Escontrias, 35, who works in the Rampart Division and lives in Pico Rivera, has donated $900 of his own money to help three Eastside youths attend the Los Angeles Music School and helped build a library at Para Los Ninos, a Skid Row social service agency.

He said many officers live outside the city because they could be targeted by people they arrest. Other officers say that if an attacker wants to hunt down an officer, it will happen regardless of where he or she lives.

“If someone really wants to find you, they will,” said Officer Keith Thomas, 34, who is assigned to the 77th Division and lives within the precinct’s patrol area. As a precaution, he says, he is always prepared.

“Maybe it’s ridiculous to wear your gun while you’re out cutting the grass, but I do,” Thomas said. “I can’t think of anywhere I don’t go where I don’t take my gun.”

What can help make officers more sensitive is exposure to different people in social or community events outside the context of law enforcement, which often deals with the negative aspects of society, said Lucky Altman, a community-police relations specialist with the National Conference, a service organization that provides cultural-awareness training for law enforcement agencies across the country.

“I think it is in that context that police officers will open themselves up to different people and ideas,” said Altman, who added that officers do not necessarily have to live in the community they serve to be culturally sensitive.

Kroeker, who lives in the Santa Clarita Valley, said officers are becoming involved with the community in various functions such as reading to children at libraries and working with the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity organization to build and refurbish homes in South-Central. “There’s a whole bunch of things we’re unleashing,” he said.

Times correspondent Sandra Hernandez contributed to this report.

The LAPD at Home

The smallest concentration of police officers living in the city is in Central Los Angeles, home to 304 officers, or just 4% of the 7,658-member force. An additional 34 officers live in several Southeast Los Angeles County cities. Critics say the numbers bolster their argument that the LAPD has little connection to the communities it serves. Source: American Civil Liberties Union * AT HOME

Keith Thomas is one of the LAPD officers who lives in South-Central, near the 77th Street station and not far from where he grew up. He says his community roots make his job easier. Page 22