Police Add Few Officers to Patrols, Report Says : LAPD: Mayor calls deployment record inadequate. But 631 of 900 new hires are still in academy, chief explains.

Despite a burst of hiring that has expanded the Los Angeles Police Department by 900 officers in two years, a newly completed deployment report shows that fewer than 300 have been put to work so far protecting city streets and that the uniformed patrol force has grown by just 27--a record that Mayor Richard Riordan on Wednesday said was troubling and inadequate.

“I’m very upset by it,” said Riordan, who this week received the confidential Police Department deployment update, a copy of which was also obtained by The Times. “The promise to the people of Los Angeles was that the chief would get significant numbers of new officers out in the field. These numbers show that that hasn’t happened.”

Riordan, who met privately with Police Chief Willie L. Williams on Wednesday to discuss the deployment issue, said he has been traveling to police stations across the city to address groups of officers at their roll calls, and has been troubled to notice no perceptible change in the number of officers he sees at work.

After meeting with the chief, Riordan said some of his concerns were eased when Williams explained that 631 of the officers listed as having been added to the LAPD still are at the Police Academy, so they have not been assigned to other, non-patrol duties. Those recruits soon will begin graduating, officials said, and should then begin boosting the number of officers on the streets.

Nevertheless, Riordan said he remained troubled by the slow progress in expanding the number of patrol officers.

Concerned by the apparent lack of progress, Riordan has been pressing the Police Department for clearer answers on how new officers are deployed and why more have not been assigned to patrol duties. Then, after news stories last month raised questions about the growth in the LAPD’s patrol force, Riordan stepped up the pressure by writing to the department to ask for a deployment update.

In response, the LAPD prepared a detailed breakdown of how officers have been assigned. That document shows that the LAPD has 27 more patrol officers than it had in July, 1993, when the city launched a major, multimillion-dollar departmental expansion.

When sergeants and lieutenants are included in the calculations, the overall increase in the patrol force jumps to 116; when new detectives are accounted for, the increase is 262. The use of lieutenants and detectives is somewhat misleading, however, since neither routinely respond to emergency calls. As a result, their inclusion in the report tends to overstate the number of officers actually patrolling city streets.

In the report, authored by the department’s Office of Administrative Services, officials explain the inclusion of supervisors and detectives by noting that “in a community policing environment, the emphasis goes from strictly ‘patrol’ to all those personnel who supply front-line law enforcement service to the community. Those uniformed and plainclothes officers who have day-to-day contact with the community are the front-line service providers of the department.”

LAPD officials have vowed to pull officers off desk jobs and put them on patrol. At least on the surface, however, the numbers in the confidential deployment report do not show any significant shift from desk duties to city streets.

The low number of officers added to patrol duties, Riordan said, reflects a significant deployment problem in a city where residents are protected by an understaffed Police Department. And the mayor, who has made no secret of his displeasure with some aspects of Williams’ management of the LAPD, said it is up to the chief to improve the way the department handles its people.

“The chief has to find a better way to deploy troops,” Riordan said in an interview. “I think the people of Los Angeles have a right to know why these numbers are so low and where the officers have been placed if not in the field.”

Riordan’s frustration, according to sources close to the mayor, is amplified by the commitment his administration has made to the LAPD. With record budgets, federal crime-bill funding and a major private campaign to raise money for LAPD equipment, the Riordan Administration has made public safety its top priority.

Indeed, it is a political priority as well, as Riordan campaigned for mayor on a promise to expand the department by 3,000 officers in four years, a pledge that seems unlikely to be fulfilled.

For all the Administration’s commitment to public safety, sources close to Riordan said the mayor is unhappy that he does not see more dramatic results in the department’s street presence. That unhappiness is shared by other City Hall officials.

“Finding a new police officer on the street as a result of the Public Safety Plan is like finding a needle in a haystack,” one City Hall official said.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, was out of town and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But Eric Rose, her aide for public safety issues, said his boss was keenly interested in the question of how the LAPD is using its newly hired officers.

“Councilwoman Chick takes very seriously the commitment to hiring 3,000 additional police officers,” Rose said. “If problems are found with how those officers are being assigned, solutions need to be implemented.”

The problem, according to LAPD officials, is not with hiring. After some early delays, new officers now are being brought on with ever increasing speed.

“It took a while to open the pipeline,” Deputy Chief David J. Gascon said. “Now that we’ve got that open, we’re really moving quickly.”

But new officers have been slow to find their way to the field, in part because a hiring freeze created vacancies throughout the LAPD and some of the new hires have been used to fill open positions throughout the department. With that problem now dispensed with, Riordan and his aides want to see rapid growth in the LAPD’s patrol force, and they have expressed frustration that the department has not moved quickly enough.

Meanwhile, Williams, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, has complained of excessive City Hall interference in running the department. In response, Riordan said he and his staff were only insisting that the LAPD and the chief produce better results, not micro-managing the department.

“He is the only one who has the power to do it,” the mayor said of Williams. “It has to come down to the department and the chief. All we can do is keep pushing.”

Although new hiring represents the bulwark of the LAPD’s efforts to expand its street presence, the department also is trying to stem attrition and is getting more work out of existing officers by paying more overtime. According to the recently completed deployment analysis, the LAPD is paying overtime that is the equivalent of another 265 officers.

The trouble with that computation is that not all those overtime dollars are being spent to increase the number of officers on the street or to add shifts. Instead, officers claim overtime for working longer days, as opposed to coming in on their days off.

That has a minimal effect on the department’s street presence. Moreover, there are limits to how long officers can work safely and efficiently, meaning reliance on overtime to make up for shorthanded staffing can be a risky long-term approach.

Attrition, meanwhile, continues to dog expansion efforts, as the deployment report makes clear. The report includes short synopses explaining the reasons for 12 recent resignations by officers. Eight of the 12 left after 25 months or less with the LAPD, and seven of those went to work for other law enforcement agencies. The eighth left rather than face termination.

Gascon and other officials acknowledged that attrition remains a significant issue hampering the department’s expansion efforts, but he said he is confident that the recent gains made in hiring will be reflected in significant department expansion in coming months.

According to Gascon, the 631 officers in the academy will soon begin graduating in groups of 90 or more, rapidly stepping up the progress in putting more officers on patrol.

“We’re processing large numbers of people throughout the system,” Gascon said. “And we’re maintaining quality as well as increasing quantity.”

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Where Are the Officers?

A new report shows that despite a flurry of hiring that has added 900 officers to the Los Angeles Police Department, most have not found their way to the field. Fewer than a third are patrolling city streets and the LAPD has grown by just 27 patrol officers--a performance that has led to criticism from the mayor’s office and others.

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July Sept. 1993 1995 Change Patrol Operations Patrol officers 4,012 4,039 +27 Sergeants 567 641 +74 Lieutenants 72 87 +15 Investigations Senior officers 172 143 -29 Detectives 629 804 +175 Lieutenants 36 36 0 TOTALS 5,488 5,750 +262

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Source: Los Angeles Police Department