Needy LAPD Becomes a Charity of Choice : Philanthropy: Cash, computers and more have been donated. Fear of crime may be creating a generous public mood.

The latest cause gaining appeal in Los Angeles is not AIDS or the homeless or even the rain forest. It’s the Los Angeles Police Department.

With such recent offerings as cash, computers, cameras, furniture--even a motor home--donations to the LAPD in the past five months have surpassed the tally for all of 1993.

The increase in donations, from private citizens, businesses and other government agencies, has been attributed partly to city officials’ effort to prod the private sector into helping the city during its fiscal crisis.

But some police officials speculate that residents and businesses are chipping in because they feel helpless in the war against crime and want to do their part to assist the department.

“I think it’s kind of an outpouring of support predicated on the fact that we have just been through some tumultuous experiences,” said Al Beuerlein, who heads the department’s financial support bureau.

Police in the west San Fernando Valley have fared particularly well at drawing donations over the past year, receiving thousands of dollars worth of computers, bicycles, automobiles and high-tech cameras used to produce extra-sharp photographs of evidence.

For example, 13 personal computers donated by Great Western Bank are being used to help officers write crime reports. Because reports can be written faster, police are including more details, which they believe improves the chances of a suspect being convicted if the case goes to trial.

“I can’t even guess at the number of hours this has saved us,” said West Valley Detective Dave Navarro.

According to city records, 16 donations have been accepted for the department so far this year, four more than all of last year. Because most donations to the LAPD are goods such as used computers and cars, police officials could not provide a cash total for offerings or a precise breakdown of how much each station has received.

This year, the department has taken in $22,000 in cash, 41 computers, 100 cellular phones, a 1972 motor home, a 1993 Ford wagon, office furniture and a facsimile machine, among other donations.

Police, who still rely mostly on pen and paper to keep records, say any computer--regardless of its age--is a godsend. Some donations have come when companies upgrade their computers and donate the old models.

“You can donate what you would consider to be a dinosaur and it’s a Porsche to us,” Navarro said. “You should see the faces light up when we see a computer.”

Other times, furniture and desks are donated when a company consolidates or shrinks its operations.

Leading the city’s campaign to draw donations to the police are Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilwoman Laura Chick, both of whom came into office last July and immediately began tapping community groups and private firms to beef up a department so fiscally strapped that officers have not had a raise in two years and use dilapidated equipment such as cars with more than 100,000 miles on them.

As part of Riordan’s efforts to increase donations, next month the City Council is expected to approve a special trust fund for the Police Department to cut down on the red tape that delays the acceptance of donations for at least two weeks until the council can consider them. The trust fund would eliminate the requirement of council approval for donations valued under $10,000.

West Valley Sgt. Walt Kainz attributes most of the increase in donations his division has garnered to Chick’s efforts. They have included turning over more than $80,000 from her office budget to the division and giving the department three of the seven city cars assigned to her staff.

She has also encouraged residents to make donations through the West Valley Police Athletic League Supporters, a nonprofit booster organization that uses cash donations to purchase equipment for the division, Kainz said. Contributors to such organizations can get a tax write-off.

Money donated through West Valley PALS was used to purchase a sophisticated $700 camera that police use to photograph needle marks on the arms of suspected drug users for use as evidence in court, Kainz said. The camera originally used by the department was damaged during the Northridge earthquake and the Police Department lacked the cash to replace it, he said.

Another high-tech camera that was purchased for $800 with donated funds uses ultraviolet light to photograph crime-scene fingerprints that cannot be lifted using conventional methods, he said. Last week, police said they used the camera to link a suspect to a truckload of stolen computers.

Still, some donations have come by chance. Recently, Kainz said, a group of residents asked if they could send some information to the station via facsimile. When police told the group that no such machine was available, the group donated $250 for police to buy one, he said.

The motivations behind the donations vary.

A spokesman for Duskin Co. Ltd., a cleaning-equipment rental firm based in Osaka, Japan, said the firm donated $20,000--the biggest cash donation in recent months--to the Police Department’s Asian Crime Investigation unit because an executive vice president was acquainted with a sergeant and wanted to help.

Last year, Rice Honda Co. of La Puente loaned the LAPD two Sea-Doo watercraft, similar to oversize jet skis, for a year to be used, in part, to make rescues when the Los Angeles River overflows. Tim Rice, vice president of the firm, said American Honda offers the use of its products not only to assist police but for the publicity.

“We want the Sea-Doos to be seen out there,” he said.

In the past, the LAPD has received such unusual offerings as a 4-year-old gelding Thoroughbred named Mesa Blaze from an Oxnard resident in 1992 to be used in the department’s mounted police unit.

In 1982, Jack LaLanne donated physical fitness equipment and the use of his Pasadena gym. In 1988, American Honda donated three all-terrain vehicles. The staff of the television show “Hunter” got into the act in 1990 by donating a cellular phone.