VAN NUYS : Police Station Tour Reveals Tight Quarters

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon led a tour Thursday through the Van Nuys Police Station to demonstrate the need for a bond measure to fund the construction of police stations and improvements to existing ones.

Alarcon late last month urged his colleagues to put before the voters a bond measure he has drafted that would raise $100 million to build two police stations at $35 million each.

One of the stations would be built in the Panorama City area, the other in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.

The remaining $30 million would be used to upgrade technology and alleviate crowding at older stations such as Van Nuys.

The City Council will vote Tuesday on whether to put such a measure on the June ballot. Considerable opposition to the proposal is expected on the council.

Police Capt. Jim McMurray joined Alarcon in leading the tour through the three-story Van Nuys station. The building, listed as having a 104-person capacity, now houses 307 sworn officers and other employees.

“I went to college back in the days when we stuffed Volkswagens,” McMurray said of the feat of managing three workers in the amount of space designed for one.

Alarcon and McMurray led film crews and reporters through the 33-year-old station. They pointed out free-standing filing cabinets and lockers that block doorways and choke off hallways.

Part of the wall has been opened between the offices of detectives working a gang detail and those investigating robberies because the door between the units has been completely closed off by filing cabinets.

McMurray called attention to many structural problems with the building, some from age, but most a result of last year’s earthquake. He added that it has often been said that were the station not a city building, it would have been red-tagged.

Holes opened in the plasterboard last year, “some of them big enough to put your head in,” McMurray said. These have been plastered and puttied by officers sick of looking at their dilapidated surroundings, he said.

“We do our best with what we can,” McMurray said, kicking a corner of carpeting back over the concrete dip at the bottom of the stairwell.

Alarcon said he wanted to host this tour to graphically detail the department’s overwhelming need for improvement funds.

However, it is precisely the vast range of dire and drastic LAPD needs that has opponents of Alarcon’s proposed bond measure wary.

Valley council members Laura Chick and Marvin Braude are among those who want to delay the ballot measure until they have a detailed plan and budget for when projects will be completed and how much they will cost.

Alarcon said the time is crucial for renewing efforts at building a sixth police district in the San Fernando Valley. The area in Panorama City, already slated to hold the new station, is minutes away from where a pedestrian last week shot and killed a young vandal.

“I believe in community action and responsibility,” Alarcon said, “but there is simply no substitute for police presence and visibility.”