Taking the Oath to Help Stop Crime : Volunteers: Hundreds attend swearing-in for block captains and community representatives for the LAPD’s South Bureau.

Steve Hearn made his way through the folding chairs in a cavernous room in the Shrine Auditorium, crisp in a dress shirt and tie, his young son at his side. He called out greetings to some of the police officers in the room--”You back out in the field?”--before finding a seat.

Hearn, 42, a diesel mechanic for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a former police officer, has been one of the South Bureau’s block captains for seven years.

“The days of living behind your drapes and shades are over,” Hearn said. “People have got to start working together. Otherwise, I don’t know where we’ll be in 10 years.”

The event that brought Hearn and about 400 others out on a rainy Saturday morning was billed as a swearing-in of block captains and community police representatives--the citizen volunteers for the area served by the South Bureau, a wide swath of Los Angeles that includes some of the most crime-ridden sections.

But it was also a pep rally of sorts--filled with praise for the 931 block captains and 157 community police representatives who make up the vanguard of the LAPD’s community-based policing effort in South-Central Los Angeles. The volunteers brought their friends, their spouses and their children.

A police officer came by with a thick handbook for block captains, who function as the foot soldiers in the Los Angeles Police Department’s community-based effort. He bestowed it upon 14-year-old Steve Hearn IV. “Keep this for your dad,” the officer said.

“We’re the eyes and ears of the Police Department,” said the elder Hearn, who has lived in Los Angeles most of his life. “We have a telephone tree on my block. We can call from one end of the block to the other if we see someone suspicious on the block. . . . As far as thinking you’re going to come hang out and drink booze on our block, you’re going to stand out.”

There was a time when Hearn thought about joining a police reserve unit but his block captain work now fulfills his desire to help the community.

Outside it poured. Inside, people in everything from suits to jeans kibitzed with police officers and took snapshots of themselves with Chief Willie L. Williams.

There was praise for their concern for their communities and praise for their showing up on a rainy Saturday morning when it would have been easier to roll over and go back to sleep. “We work for you, not the other way around,” Williams said.

As police officials cited lower crime statistics in the past year, the room erupted in applause and cheers. Police even credited the lower murder rate--department statistics indicate 77 fewer homicides in the South Bureau in 1994 than in 1993--to the block captains and community police representatives:

“Less people were murdered in the South Bureau because of your work,” said Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, who heads the bureau. “Our goal is to have a block captain on every street. Next year we’re going to be there.”

Although they hailed the community volunteers, police also assailed LAPD-bashers.

Deputy Chief Bayan Lewis decried the derisive reference to the LAPD as “an army of occupation” and said the only army was the “alliance” between the police and the community workers in the auditorium. “From now on, when they talk about an army of occupation,” Lewis said, “that’s us. “

The South Bureau’s “army” includes young and old, males and females, and all ethnic groups. Block captains organize Neighborhood Watches--which do not patrol. They discuss security issues and talk regularly with police officers. Community police representatives supervise and manage the block captains.

Although the community police representatives are relatively new for the South Bureau, the system of having block captains “goes back 20 to 30 years,” Sgt. Marc Goodman said as he looked around the room at longtime block captains. “A lot of them predate every officer in here.”

Zethel Meyers, 67, an Avalon-area resident, was a block captain for more than 20 years, she said. Now a community police representative, she still does everything from cleaning up her streets to taking phone calls night and day from neighbors.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to help members of the community in distress,” Meyers said.