SANTA MONICA : Police Get Passing Grade at First Community Meeting

More than 100 residents from the north end of Santa Monica gave local law enforcement a solid endorsement last weekend during the police department’s first communitywide meeting in three years.

“I think they’re doing a pretty good job,” said 88-year-old resident Ynez McBride after Sunday’s meeting. “Palisades Park and Lincoln Park and the pier are all better than they used to be.”

The meeting, which will be repeated over the next two weekends at different locations, includes a lengthy video about the 191-officer department, and a speech by Chief James T. Butts Jr. outlining the department’s performance in fighting crime.

The number of serious crimes, such as murders, rapes and assaults, dropped 18% in 1994 from the year before, Butts told the group. The first five months of 1995 showed a further 11% decrease in such crimes, he added.

A handful of residents questioned the chief on subjects ranging from complaints about traffic and roller-skating in Douglas Park to the possibility of building police substations.

Butts suggested that one barometer of the improvements to law enforcement in Santa Monica are the changes at Lincoln Park, which is across the street from St. Monica’s Church, the site of the community meeting.

Before he was hired as chief in 1991, Butts said, he was approached in Lincoln Park by a man offering to sell him rock cocaine. With the park’s multimillion-dollar renovation and beefed-up police patrols, the park is again a place where citizens can take their family.

The department’s next community meeting, scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday at Virginia Avenue Park, may not be as amiable. Residents near the park have long complained about drug- and gang-related violence in what is known as the Pico neighborhood, an area extending along the Pico Boulevard corridor from about 14th Street east to the city border.

Pico resident Art Casillas attended the first meeting and disputed Butts’ assertion that drug-related crimes were down. In his part of the city, Casillas said, drug problems are worse than ever and police are not responding.

Butts, however, pointed out that police conducted several raids in the area earlier this year and arrested more than 40 people on drug charges.

The department’s final community meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. July 23 at Mt. Olive Church, 1343 Ocean Park Blvd.