LAPD Secrecy on Street Crime Data Triggers Controversy : Police: Yaroslavsky to call for release of violent-crime analyses. The material includes plans for stymieing lawbreakers.

A decision by the Los Angeles Police Department to keep confidential extensive analyses of street crime has prompted concern from some community leaders and elected officials who want to see the documents--no matter how ugly their findings may seem.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said he will introduce a motion at the City Council meeting today calling on the LAPD to release its crime reviews despite concern that so doing could cause public anxiety.

“It flies in the face of community-based policing to withhold from the public the very type of information it needs to police itself,” Yaroslavsky said.

The violent-crime analyses, issued every few months, are created from reports submitted by the LAPD’s 18 geographical divisions. They contain a statistical look at the worst crime hot-spots, an analysis of underlying causes and an action plan to stymie those who break the law, police sources said.

But the LAPD is refusing to release the reports to the public.

The city attorney’s office rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents. Police Chief Willie L. Williams refused to discuss the report Monday night, referring questions to the city attorney’s office.

But Assistant Chief Bernard Parks, who is compiling the reports, said in an interview Monday that he views them as internal working documents aimed at improving crime-fighting by the department.

“It’s just like our getting ready for the World Cup,” he said. “We don’t publicize that. We don’t publicize our getting ready for the end of a trial. We don’t publicize operational reports.”

Earlier, he had said that release of the information would pit neighborhoods against neighborhoods and prompt council members to call for changes in deployment strategies.

Some community leaders insisted Monday that they want the facts so they will have a realistic view of the neighborhoods where they live.

“Why hide the truth from us?” asked Frank Villalobos of Barrio Planners, an Eastside group. “We want to know what’s really going on.”

Reaction on the Los Angeles City Council was mixed.

Councilwoman Laura Chick said she wants police officials to appear before the council’s Public Safety Committee next month to justify why the reports ought to remain secret. If the answer is not good enough, she said she will call for the information to be released.

“I am not calling for immediate disclosure, but I am not convinced yet that this crime information is confidential,” Chick said.

Yaroslavsky went further by calling for immediate release of the information. He said all statistical information in the reports could be released without affecting LAPD operations.

“In the spirit of open government, this information must be made public,” he said. “The citizens of Los Angeles should not and must not be denied this information.”

Councilman Marvin Braude, on the other hand, sided with the Police Department.

“I think public safety has a higher priority than the need to know,” Braude said. “I’m ready to move in the direction of public safety--to erode some individual rights to protect public safety.”

The department already compiles comprehensive crime statistics from neighborhoods across the city, information that is available to the public. But that raw data is analyzed and coupled with commentary in the reports on contributing factors--such as the number of liquor stores, parolees and homeless people in the area.

Also included in the reports are LAPD strategies for combatting the crime--special patrols, abatement programs and other crime-fighting mechanisms. “That’s something we would consider very sensitive,” said one LAPD official familiar with the report.

Mayor Richard Riordan said he has not taken a position on whether the information ought to be released. “The answer should be obvious--people should know,” he said. “But I’m worried about people drawing unfair conclusions from this.”

Jaeis Chon, who participates in a crime patrol in the Koreatown area, was equally undecided. The hard facts might damage the reputations of some communities, he said. But the information might prompt more people into action as well.

“We hoped the Williams Administration would change the mentality that the LAPD is in a world of its own,” said Karen Bass, who is leading the campaign against the concentration of liquor stores in South-Central Los Angeles. “The police and the community both need to review that data.”

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo contributed to this story.