LAPD, FBI Join Forces to Probe Unsolved Murders : Law enforcement: Task force to work out of South Bureau. It will look into more than 1,000 killings.

In an unusual partnership, the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department announced Monday that they have formed a joint task force to investigate more than 1,000 unsolved murders--many committed by street gangs and drug dealers--in southern Los Angeles.

The effort represents the first time FBI agents have worked side by side with local police in a separate unit devoted to tackling open murder cases, an FBI spokesman said.

The alliance pairs eight agents from the FBI’s Los Angeles office with eight detectives from the LAPD’s South Bureau, which covers the area from Baldwin Hills to San Pedro. South Bureau routinely records the highest homicide rate in the city, and has traditionally had a lower rate of solving murders than the city’s other three police bureaus--in part because many people who witness gang-related murders are reluctant to come forward.

Police also have been stymied by the mobility of suspects from the gang and drug underworld, who frequently escape arrest by traveling the country and even the world.

LAPD spokesmen said the FBI will help police pursue suspects who have fled to other states or countries, where federal agents are often attached to U.S. embassies. Sixty Los Angeles murder suspects are believed to be living in various Latin American countries, including five in Belize.

Police also hope that the FBI involvement will persuade more murder witnesses to come forward because they will have access to the federal witness protection program.

The victims in the unsolved cases range from a high school honors student caught in a gang cross-fire to a 31-year-old man killed over a debt as he walked down a street with a friend, police said.

Some cases are years old. Police cited the 1984 murder of Dorsey High School honors student Earnest Pickett Jr., who was standing outside the school when he was killed during a gang shootout. Police have identified Edwin Oswaldo Smith as the suspected killer, but have not arrested him. Thus the case is considered unsolved.

Even with recent improvements, South Bureau’s murder clearance rate--defined as the cases in which a suspect was arrested and charged--was 57% last year, said South Bureau Cmdr. Mark Kroeker. By contrast, West Bureau, covering the city’s Westside, cleared 74% of its homicides. With 333 murders last year, South Bureau accounted for more than a third of the citywide total of 839.

Lt. Sergio Robleto, commander of South Bureau’s homicide section, said the LAPD had previously set up a six-officer detail to pursue unsolved murders in South-Central and South Los Angeles but that it was unable to put a significant dent in the backlog. So overwhelming was the caseload that some unit members suffered serious health problems.

“Three officers from the unsolved unit had heart attacks and one had a stroke,” Robleto said.

Although the murder rate in South Bureau and citywide dropped last year, FBI and police officials said the rate of gang-related homicides--which has risen steadily since 1985--is a critical problem requiring joint federal-local action. Gang-related murders in South Bureau jumped from 51 in 1985 to 154 last year.

“The problem is growing and we have to put a stop to it,” said John Hoos, a spokesman for the Los Angeles FBI office. “We feel that by combining resources we can have an impact on it.”

At a news conference, LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams acknowledged that there has been substantial friction between his officers and FBI employees in the past. But he said the two agencies decided to put their differences aside to pursue unsolved murders.

“It’s the type of mutual goal that makes law enforcement special,” Williams said.

Charlie J. Parsons, head of the Los Angeles FBI office, agreed, adding that his agency has made an extra effort to address violent crime in recent years.

“We can’t stand by and cross our arms and act like we don’t see what’s happening in Los Angeles,” he said.

FBI and LAPD spokesmen said a joint murder task force seemed a logical next step after the success of past local-federal efforts to apprehend bank robbers and fugitives suspected of crimes including murder.

In such efforts federal agents and local police have cooperated, but never worked together in the same office. A similar joint effort to solve old murder cases was launched in Washington, D.C., in 1992, but the federal agents did not share quarters with local police.

Los Angeles FBI Agent Mark S. Llewellyn, who worked on the joint fugitive task force for five years and is now assigned to the new murder task force, said the fugitive unit solved 44 murders in the last year.

“This will stop us from duplicating the tracks of police officers, who often have information on cases that we are investigating,” Llewellyn said. “This way we can work together.”

“There are so many murders that happen every day,” he said. “Solving these homicides is like putting out fires: They don’t get solved and you have to move on to the next one.”

The joint murder task force will be housed in the South Bureau homicide unit in the Crenshaw Mall in Baldwin Hills.

Robleto, the South Bureau homicide chief, said he was particularly eager to get federal help in tracking murder suspects in other nations where government officials are sometimes uncooperative.

The FBI can aid in such cases, he said, because federal agents assigned to U.S. embassies are more familiar with foreign police officials and informants, and often in a better position to develop information on suspects sought in Los Angeles.

“Quite frankly, there are some places I’m afraid to send my people down there unless they really understand the politics . . . lest my guys come back in a little paper bag,” Robleto said. “We’ve been to places where they had to have a military operation before we could go and interview someone. Murder is a little more complicated than it used to be.”

Because many murder suspects flee out of state, he said, the FBI’s nationwide network of offices and close contacts with police departments in other cities should make it easier to catch them.

“The gangs and narcotics trade takes people from Southern California all over the U.S.,” he said. “We need to be able to go out to another city and have access to sources of information. We don’t have a liaison in every city, but they do.”

Robleto said 80% of the unsolved murders the task force will concentrate on are committed in public view. But witnesses sometimes are afraid to come forward, fearing that the killers--often members of gangs--will retaliate violently against them or their families.

So serious is the retaliation problem, he said, that the LAPD last week obtained a moving van so police can swiftly remove witnesses and their household belongings from their neighborhood and relocate them out of harm’s way.

The involvement of the FBI, he said, will give potential witnesses access to the more elaborate federal witness protection program, which he believes will encourage more South-Central residents to come forward in murder cases.

* PICKETT CASE: In seeking justice, the mother of gang victim Earnest Pickett Jr. is a model of persistence. B1