Community Ties Key to Fighting Crime, Says Valley Police Chief

Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy has commanded Los Angeles Police Department operations in the San Fernando Valley since Nov. 1. He has already become a visible figure on the local scene, promoting community-based policing and other initiatives at meetings and public forums.

Pomeroy had previously spent six months as the department’s employee relations administrator, overseeing contract negotiations with the police union.

He also headed the LAPD’s police intelligence unit, which oversees anti-terrorist activities, organized-crime investigations and administrative vice activities. For several years before that, the 25-year veteran of the department supervised the force’s narcotics operations.

Pomeroy was interviewed by staff writer Josh Meyer.

Question: What do you see as your role as chief of the LAPD’s Valley operations?

Answer: My mission is to reduce crime and to reduce the fear of crime in the Valley, and I intend to do that through supporting our officers and community groups we already have in place and through continuing the implementation of community-based policing that the Valley already has under way.

Q: Those efforts started long ago, under then-Chief Ed Davis, a longtime Valley booster and resident, and expanded greatly under your immediate predecessor, Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker. Is the Valley still at the forefront of such efforts?

A: Community-based policing efforts in the San Fernando Valley are going very well. We have over 3,000 block captains, about 360 community police representatives and literally tens of thousands of citizens who volunteer their time to serve their community in conjunction with the Police Department.

Q: Is community-based policing working?

A: Absolutely. Community-based policing, at least in the San Fernando Valley, began to be focused about two years ago, about the same time the crime rate decreased. I think there is a very real correlation between the two. In the Valley there has been a 13% reduction in major crimes in each of the past two years. In 1994 compared to 1993, violent crimes in the Valley are down 13%, homicides are down 46%, total repressible crimes are down almost 15%.

Q: What are some of the most successful aspects?

A: The neighborhood watch program, with all the thousands of people involved. Another example is all the anti-graffiti campaigns we have. Every area has an active anti-graffiti paint-out program. And we have a tagger task force run out of my office. Citizens tell me that when they look around the Valley now, they see a lot less graffiti than they used to see.

Q: What other programs are working that people can volunteer for?

A: Operation Sparkle, a community clean-up day. Last Oct. 8 we picked up 220 tons of trash and painted out thousands of square feet of graffiti and we intend to do even more this year. Also, the Jeopardy anti-gang program is operating very well throughout the Valley, particularly in Foothill and Devonshire area, involving everything from mentoring and tutoring at-risk youth to sports teams, including track teams, ice hockey and wrestling teams.

Q: You seem to solicit a lot of community input. How important is that?

A: I can’t do my job unless I know what the community wants, and the only way I can know what they want is to be accessible to them. I make a conscientious and deliberate effort to be as accessible to the community as possible, and to accept as many invitations to attend as many public meetings and events as I can.

Q: What are you hearing from the community?

A: That depends on what type of group I’m with. Traffic flow is a concern to many people. Graffiti and the presence of gang members are also of concern, and there is also some fear about carjackings and drive-by shootings, although I have yet to encounter victims of these crimes. I don’t mean to minimize those fears, but the chances of being a victim of such a crime is a lot less than what the notoriety of such crimes leads people to believe.

Q: What about gangs and community concerns about them? Are you making any headway?

A: We have lots of things going on. We do have task forces dealing with gangs. We have our prevention programs such as DARE, which has a gang component, and we have the Jeopardy program, which stresses parental intervention in gang problems.

We hope to introduce parenting programs in Van Nuys and West Valley, which would give parents the skills to keep their kids out of gangs and out of trouble. This is not a program we seek to impose on parents, but something we would offer to parents who think they need help.

Q: Do you think parents would go for such a program?

A: We’ve found there is an urgent need for such a program and that parents are grateful when we offer it to them. It doesn’t involve simply attending a meeting. It’s complicated. It has a curriculum that lasts several weeks, once or twice a week for several hours. Most parents who are interested already have identified that their kids may be in trouble. This would deal with ways to address those problems. Van Nuys Division already is setting up such a program.

Q: Crime is at the top of people’s list of concerns, but the actual rate of most crimes is declining or remains steady. Is there a dichotomy between perception and reality?

A: Perception versus reality is an issue. At every public meeting I go to, I try to draw a balance between the fact that there is crime in the community and that we need to bring down the crime rate, but that the perception also is greater than the reality and that we need not be as fearful as we are.

Someone will always stand up and say they were a victim yesterday or that we the police are insensitive and we don’t care. I don’t want that to be the case. But statistically, crime has been reduced in the Valley, and the continuing trend has been that crime is being reduced. I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about this, but I also want to avoid the Chicken Little atmosphere that sometimes pervades our thought processes when it comes to crime.

Q: What kind of internal changes have you made in the way the department is run?

A: Most of that is contract stuff that has to be negotiated with the police union. We have done some things to assist employees after the earthquake. One of the things we have been able to do is make their hours more flexible, to make it more convenient for them. Many of our employees are still feeling the effects of the quake personally. Many had their homes damaged or destroyed. But as far as services are concerned, the earthquake is not impeding us whatsoever. By and large, it is back to business at our police stations.

Q: If you could speak personally to every member of the community, what would you say to them?

A: The first thing I’d tell them is that we care about them, and it is not just Police Chief Willie Williams, myself and the managers, but the line officers. We have a tremendous number of line officers that work very, very hard for the community, in behalf of the community. We all care about the community. I’d tell people to join with us in the neighborhood watch program, as our eyes and ears, by making a phone call when there is a crime in progress. You work with us and we can reduce crime even further.

Q: After Rodney King, some people lost respect for police. Has that changed?

A: I think the community saw the police best during the earthquake, and I think they appreciate the efforts made in their behalf. I hope they take the time to make that appreciation known to the officers, who showed great heroism. We all like a pat on the back now and then, and our officers are no different than anyone else.

Q: How is morale?

A: There were and maybe there are some morale problems with the rank and file. But even with a few less officers in the field due to the budgetary processes, our officer-initiated activity in the Valley--arrests, tickets, field interviews--is up 8% this year over last. Our officers are working hard and doing a good job. We now have a few new police cars in the field with many more to come.

The stalled contract talks may be resolved soon, and we will have some new police facilities in the Valley in the near future. I know our officers will appreciate these improvements and I hope it has a positive impact on morale.

Q: What about these newly released crime reports showing local hot spots? How will they help you in the future?

A: Once these reports have been fine-tuned and once we fully develop our analytical skills, they will help us deploy our officers. We just started them last year, and now we are developing them quarterly, and we will soon be at the point where these are standardized enough to be used as tools to fight crime and deploy our resources. These reports will help us to pinpoint where crime is up and down, and where the impact is.