LAPD to Launch Civilian Police Academy in Valley : Van Nuys: In latest push toward community-based law enforcement, 80 residents will receive 30 hours of training. Program begins Jan. 25.

The Los Angeles Police Department will open a new police academy next month in the San Fernando Valley, but graduates won’t be allowed to carry guns or wear badges.

They will, however, be armed with new insights about how real police officers do their jobs.

In yet another push toward community-based policing, 80 residents from throughout the Valley will take part in a civilian police academy, consisting of 30 hours of training on the use of force, traffic procedures and arrests.

The goal of the Community Police Academy is to “build a better bond between the community and the Police Department,” said Capt. Ronald Bergmann, the commanding officer of the Foothill Division, who is overseeing the project.

Two classes of 40 students each will begin the program Jan. 25 at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys, with some of the lessons taking place at the LAPD Police Academy near Downtown.

“What we want is for the community to get a better idea of why officers do the things they do,” Bergmann said. Police officers want the public to understand why “officers get involved in pursuits and shootings and what happens to them if they do.”

In an effort to break the code of silence surrounding police procedure, several LAPD officers will teach the three-hour-long courses to business owners, community activists and members of Neighborhood Watch groups selected for the program. The civilians will receive computer-simulated pistol training, but will not work with real firearms.

The academy has already been heralded as a success in the department’s South Bureau, which graduated its first class in September.

LAPD Commander Carlo Cudio, who is second in command of the South Bureau’s divisions, said he first suggested the program to Deputy Police Chief Mark A. Kroeker when both men were in charge of the Valley police divisions. But when they were transferred together to head the South Bureau, they took the idea with them.

“The theory is to pick people who are influential in the community, but who are not totally sold on the police,” Cudio said.

By providing citizens with “unfiltered information” on police procedure, it allows them to become “ambassadors” who are able to pass on their newfound knowledge to other members of their communities,” particularly if a controversial incident involving the police erupts, Kroeker said.

“It is a primary tool in overcoming one of the biggest hazards and deficiencies with policing, and that’s lack of information or misinformation,” said Kroeker, the commanding officer of the South Bureau.

A second class in the South Bureau will begin next month. Cudio said the costs are negligible, composed mainly of the salary of officers conducting the training, and that the pay-backs outweigh the expense.

“It’s no waste,” he said.

James Fyfe, a former New York City police officer and professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, who has in the past criticized the LAPD for being “insular and out of touch,” said he believes the academy is “a very good thing.”

“As a general rule anything that acquaints citizens with the problems that police on the street face is a good idea,” Fyfe said. “But it’s a two-way street because it puts the police in touch with their citizens too.”

Fyfe said the public often has unrealistic expectations of what the police can do, so the academy should educate residents of the restraints that police work under and the problems they face.

But not everybody lauds the concept.

Mike Salcido, a spokesman for Police Watch, a Los Angeles-based police misconduct and lawyer referral service, said that instead of committing time and money on a civilian academy, the LAPD should be re-evaluating its own policy and training its own personnel.

“Here we have citizens who are going to be trained on policy, but that policy is all screwed up,” Salcido said.

Salcido cited the controversial shooting of Sonji Danese Taylor, who died Dec. 16, 1993, in a fusillade of bullets after officers spotted her on the roof of a Westlake hospital holding her 3-year-old son and wielding a knife. No charges were filed against police in that shooting, though an autopsy report revealed that Taylor had been shot in the back seven times.

“I think it’s a law enforcement-sympathizing program,” said Salcido of the academy concept. “I doubt they are training them on how to counsel victims on the excessive use of force.”

It may be that only graduates of the program will know if it’s a success or something else.

Ruby Maillian, a 30-year resident of South-Central Los Angeles who graduated from the South Bureau program in September, said she found the training to be an “enlightening” experience on police procedure.

“We all had our negative views (of the police) in certain circumstances, but after going through the class . . . and once we were instructed and read the policy, we felt differently,” Maillian said.

“I would be the first to commend the police in certain actions and the first to condemn them in others after taking the class,” she said. “Now I know when they do something wrong and if I encounter that, I’d be the first to tell.”