Officers Without Offices : Decentralization May Help School Police, Who Often Go to Extremes to Do Business

Los Angeles school police officers assigned to the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles and Harbor areas are nomads.

They use their cars, local schools with understanding staffs, parking lots and even restaurants to conduct the normal business of campus policing.

Some change into their uniforms in their cars, others drive an hour to pick up a patrol car to begin their shifts.

But all that could change. Under a new effort to decentralize the Los Angeles Unified School District’s police department, three new offices are scheduled to open to alleviate the officers’ inconveniences and to bring services closer to the schools. The police finally could have a place to write reports and interview suspects and witnesses. And they won’t have to drive Downtown to school district headquarters to complete paperwork or training sessions.

“We had officers dressing in their cars, holding briefings in the parking lot,” said Sgt. Randolph Glymph, who is assigned to the Valley. “We really need a place out here to conduct business. It would be a much more efficient way of dealing with the schools and taking care of business.”

The school police department’s efforts are twofold: first, to restructure operations from the Downtown district headquarters, and second, to give officers and other police employees a more visible and more effective place to work.

“It makes no sense for a West L.A. officer or detective to drive Downtown and then turn around and go to West L.A.,” said school district Police Chief Wes Mitchell. “The officers also need a sense of connectedness. There is a real sense of loneliness out there--their bosses are 30 or 40 minutes away.”

Mitchell said his department has received the go-ahead and will soon submit a plan for the location and funding of the new offices to Supt. Sid Thompson. The department expects to have space by next year. Additionally, Mitchell said, the school police need a more visible presence throughout the school district. For example, he would like to find space in the district’s Van Nuys regional office.

The police officers are constantly driving Downtown to school district headquarters to submit reports and attend meetings. The sergeants and detectives are Downtown at least once a week, officials said.

In the Valley, the officers park their patrol cars at the district’s Sun Valley garage, where the transportation department keeps school buses and a bungalow. The officers recently were granted permission to use the office for their morning roll call, but bus drivers also use the space.

“We’re only allowed to share it for those few minutes,” Glymph said. “Bus drivers are walking through, supervisors. There’s no locker room. It’s just not ours.”

Police department clerical staffers for the Valley and other areas of the city all work out of the district’s offices at 450 N. Grand Ave.

On the Westside, the situation is worse, police say. There, the district has no place to park school police cars and no office space at all. The officers meet at schools and Downtown, and the Los Angeles Police Department sometimes loans the department space.

In the Harbor area, the department has a small office, but officers say it is inconveniently located in the southern part of the district.

The police say they need central locations to meet with suspects and witnesses, and they typically do not want to interview the students in LAPD stations. “That’s not always the environment we want to be in with these kids,” Mitchell said.

The school district is embarking on a massive restructuring, shifting from top-down decision making. The school system will be reorganized into clusters and complexes of schools with reduced layers of district administration.

The police department’s efforts are in keeping with the overall district philosophy, officials said. “It’s definitely consistent with what we’re trying to do,” said Assistant Supt. Dan Isaacs, who oversees the district’s school operations division. “We’re all trying to bring services closer to the school sites.”