SUNLAND-TUJUNGA : Officer Working Out of Service Center

Often, the first reaction Los Angeles Police Officer Ernst Cabriales gets when he visits a business for the first time is, “What’s wrong?”

Cabriales started working out of a new LAPD community service center at the Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce last month.

He said that it’s so unusual to have a regular police presence in the area that merchants and residents often don’t realize that he’s not there on a case.

Cabriales said he hopes his continued presence in the neighborhood will turn that response around. The arrival of a police officer, he said, does not always mean bad news.

Cabriales’ arrival was greeted favorably by local merchants.

“I had the feeling the Police Department wasn’t doing anything for anyone,” said one local business owner who complained about how a few years ago it took four hours for police to respond when his business was broken into. Now he takes comfort in the police car parked nearby for two hours a day while Cabriales is in his new office.

“We needed him up here,” said Lorraine Desmond, a vice president at the Chamber of Commerce and a local realtor. She said the number of transients in the area has dropped dramatically since the new service center was started.

Federal grant money is now paying the salary for Cabriales, who had been a patrol officer in Sunland-Tujunga for two years before starting this latest assignment a week and a half ago.

He uses the chamber office for two hours Tuesday through Saturday in the afternoons.

Cabriales said residents have come into the office to let him know about everything from drug activity to barking dogs.

In addition to the local service center, the LAPD Foothill Division has been increasing patrol cars in the community since December. New foot patrols began in February and the chamber is also organizing a Business Watch program.

The new community service center is being paid for out of a $4-million federal grant to Los Angeles as part of an effort to put more police officers on the street, said Sgt. Brad Young, grant coordinator for the LAPD Foothill Division.