LAPD Unveils Plans for High-Crime Areas : Police: Strategies include saturating Valley ‘hot spots’ with officers and tracking trends and criminals by computer.

Police have unveiled plans for combatting San Fernando Valley crime “hot spots,” ranging from saturating them with police officers on overtime to tracking crime trends and criminals by computer.

Those strategies, and the underlying crime statistics that have made them necessary, are contained in the first-ever quarterly Violent Crime Operations Plans, which were recently released by each of the Valley’s five LAPD divisions.

They show that a department that once made do with tracking crime trends by sticking pins on a map board is now making use of a computer system to track criminals and crime trends, and ensure that scarce resources are used where they are most needed.

In the last three months, the Los Angeles Police Department has reported dramatic decreases in many violent crime categories in the Valley, crediting the January earthquake and a purported gang truce with reducing homicides by nearly half.

But many other crimes that had previously been on the increase are leveling off, or even showing signs of decreasing, thanks to the fledgling operational plans being developed and refined by the LAPD, according to the reports.

“They have made everyone much more aware of where things are occurring and why things are occurring,” said Lt. Fred Tuller, coordinator of the Violent Crime Operations Plans for Valley police areas.

“That is very important. Otherwise, you are going out there in a dark closet and doing police work, but you don’t know which direction to go.”

They are the first such quarterly reports to be released by the LAPD after a controversy earlier this year over the agency’s efforts to prevent the public release of extensive analyses of street crime.

That secrecy prompted clashes between community leaders and elected officials, who wanted the documents made public, and police, who declined to give away law enforcement techniques or alarm residents of high-crime areas.

But in April, the department released detailed reports that identified some of the worst pockets of crime in the Valley over the last several years, blaming much of the violence on spreading gang activity, increased drug use and a “large victim pool” of illegal immigrants.

To compile the reports and improve their ability to deploy officers, police began using computers and civilian data analysts last year to do far more detailed crime studies than ever before.

Now, three months later, the crime pocket boundaries appear to be much the same. So do the entrenched crime problems, particularly along Sepulveda and Van Nuys boulevards, the north-south corridors that bisect the Valley and have long been known as magnets for drugs and prostitution.

Nevertheless, most Valley police divisions reported small and large successes in dealing with the most recalcitrant crime problems, or at least in identifying the need to direct more resources and alternative strategies to them, according to the reports.

In Van Nuys, for instance, homicides were down 43% and robberies had been cut 28% from the previous year, the latter attributed mostly to more effective police deployment since the new year.

Tuller, who also oversees Valley gang prevention activities, said computerization and increased planning have given officers better information about gangs, and the relationship of local motels and liquor stores to prostitution and assault problems.

For years, police have tracked such trends. But with the computers, “now we can query the computer and get faster and more current information as a result,” Tuller said.

Next Tuesday, the commanding officers of the Valley’s five divisions will meet at Van Nuys headquarters to discuss the reports, looking for ways to combat problems that cross boundaries, such as those in the Sepulveda and Van Nuys corridors.

The crime plans identify those two corridors as concentrations of crime in the Valley, where gang members stake their claims to turf and battle over drugs, money and even the right to assault victims in armed holdups, according to the reports.

“They have identified the violent crimes that are occurring,” said Cmdr. John Moran, second-in-command of all Valley divisions. “Now we will be implementing strategies and working together. We hope to put a real dent in this.”

Each report deals only with a specific geographic area, and they are not uniform. Like the 1993 annual reports released earlier this year, some of the quarterly reports go into greater detail than others. And now that police are building on a database that was in the embryonic stage late last year, the reports for the first time gauge the effectiveness of their crime-fighting techniques.

Among the findings, by division:

Devonshire

In Devonshire, Sepulveda Boulevard has the area’s worst crime pockets, its four major high-crime clusters running along the boulevard.

In response, police have tried to tailor overtime assignments to reduce response time to emergency calls, focus patrols on the hot spots and increase foot beats as well as traffic enforcement within the clusters.

In addition, Devonshire Division commanders hope to increase the number of reserve officers and volunteer clerical workers. So far this year, more patrols have resulted in a 20% drop in violent crime in the division, its report said.

Some of the plans focus as much on intelligence as on personnel. In April, the division put into operation an automated system to quickly access information on crime patterns, locations, vehicles and suspects involved in sexual assaults.

Along those lines, CRASH officers--who specialize in gang activities--will be trained in the use of the Gang Tracking System. Eventually, the report said, police hope to loan all CRASH officers to narcotics units to work on gang problems and increase their knowledge of anti-drug procedures.

Devonshire has also tried to refocus community policing efforts, including increasing youth participation in various division sports and instituting an occasional bicycle detail by senior lead officers.

Problems persist. The report said that prostitution “has steadily become more prevalent along Sepulveda Boulevard in both Devonshire Area and Van Nuys Area,” which has contributed to all four categories of violent crime.

Street narcotic sales, it continued, have also increased along the Sepulveda Corridor and the Park Parthenia area. Gang membership also is on the increase.

West Valley

The West Valley’s successes have come mostly through targeting its “hot” reporting districts, achieving reductions in two of the four violent crime categories.

In the first three months of the year, compared to the same period in 1993, robberies were down 8% and assaults with deadly weapons decreased 20%. Homicides doubled, from one to two, and there were 10 rapes, compared to seven last year.

Bicycle details and a robbery-suppression detail were deployed along the Sherman Way and Ventura Boulevard hot-spot corridors, and officers were paid overtime to walk foot patrols. The bike details have been particularly successful, allowing police into areas where they previously could not run or drive and making them more accessible to the public, said Capt. Valentino Paniccia, West Valley commanding officer.

Officers also are working closer with anti-gang specialists, who regularly attend roll calls to tell patrol officers about gang crime trends and wanted people. Also, detectives are working more closely with parole officers, the report said.

Van Nuys

There are at least 83 gangs in the Valley, and many of them consider the Van Nuys reporting area their turf, the report said.

There were 612 violent crimes in the area in first quarter of 1994, most of them in three clusters. “There is no question that existing resources are stretched to the limit, with no relief in sight,” noted Capt. J.S. McMurray, the division’s commanding officer.

So the division has taken to redeploying officers, providing better training and other relatively inexpensive measures.

Much of the operational plans for the Van Nuys Division were blacked out by police, who said they didn’t want criminals to know their plans. But the report, prepared by McMurray, mentioned that a top priority is to get all officers and detectives to work closely with computer experts, so crime trends can be combatted before they get out of control.

Also, police are closely monitoring the gangs in the area, noting, for instance, that the Venice Shoreline Crips have been moving from the Westside into the Panorama City area, “as they believe it is a safe haven for them.” Gang experts from the Westside and the Valley are working together to halt the gang’s relocation to the area, the report said.

Most violent crimes were blamed on gang and narcotics activity. One hot spot is a .75-square-mile area bounded by Plummer Street on the north, Titus Street on the south, Tyrone Avenue on the east and Kester Avenue on the west. The area has a large number of parolees and gangs as well as narcotics traffic, many liquor stores and a high density of low-income residents living in apartment complexes.

More than a quarter of all violent crimes in the area were committed in one corridor, running along Van Nuys Boulevard from Ventura Boulevard seven miles north to Sherman Way. The corridor contains five major drug sites where cocaine, crack and marijuana are sold openly, including one spot so well-known that “two males who were arrested on narcotics charges stated they knew of one of these locations prior to leaving the Ukraine for a vacation in the United States,” the report said.

The report identified the sites as: 14700 Delano St.; Van Nuys Boulevard at Nordhoff Street; Van Nuys Boulevard at Plummer Street; Calvert Street and Hazeltine Avenue, and Blythe Street at Willis Avenue.

North Hollywood

The North Hollywood report noted a problem with overtime. A shortage of patrol cars, it said, has made cash overtime details “ineffective.” Police in this division hope to use more foot patrols, bicycle details and observation posts in place of more car patrols.

Hot spots were identified as North Lankershim Boulevard between Strathern Street and Sherman Way; Laurel Canyon Boulevard; Magnolia Boulevard between Tujunga Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard, and Lankershim Boulevard roughly between Oxnard and Camarillo streets.

Foothill

In the Foothill area, violent crime decreased 16% compared to the first three months of 1993, due to increased police deployment, better communication between detectives and patrol officers and the Northridge quake, according to Capt. Gus S. Drulias. He said Foothill’s crime-fighting plan includes a focus on the area’s hot spots, or “directed patrols” to do better than the 774 violent crimes reported in the first three months of the year, including four homicides, 18 rapes, 223 robberies and 519 aggravated assaults.

Each watch commander will direct officers to high-crime areas, such as the Van Nuys corridor between San Fernando Road and Borden Avenue, using available patrols, reserve officers, cash-overtime details and foot and bicycle patrols. Officers from the department’s gang, narcotics and vice units will also be deployed within the cluster areas as needed.

Additionally, police plan to use officers from the car theft unit, CECATS, within the high-crime areas, “since these vehicles are oftentimes involved in other violent crimes,” the report said. And police hope to concentrate efforts on large apartment complexes by working with building owners and managers to monitor narcotics and gang activity on their property and properly screen tenants.

Vice officers are also being asked to develop a list of bars and liquor stores that have the highest incidence of crime and complaints from neighbors.

Robbery is this area’s biggest problem, especially in shopping center parking lots at Sepulveda and Devonshire Street, primarily during the early morning hours. Although the report said there are no significant gangs living in this cluster, it noted that other gangs come into the area to commit crimes.

Crime pockets in the area include Laurel Canyon Boulevard at Rinaldi Street, where many aggravated assaults have been reported after school hours, when students from nearby San Fernando High School head to the shopping center.