COMMENTARY : A Constant Dripping Wears Away at Los Angeles

Somewhere between busy signals and getting left on hold before being told cops don’t make house calls on car burglaries, let alone write reports over the phone, a clean thought emerged:

Chief Willie L. Williams ought to be experiencing this, rather than preaching that a sturdier LAPD patrolling a safer city starts with reorganizing his robbery-homicide division, creating coalescent command structures, empowered advisory boards, and less insubordination from subordinates.

He’s wrong. It starts with me. And you.

It begins with civic concern for all us law-abiding, puppy-hugging, mortgage-owning, tax-fearing, meter-feeding, diamond lane-observing, Lakers-loving jerks, of either gender, of all hues and faiths, married or single, who have largely been dumped by the law and its enforcers and who now live mostly unprotected, unserved.

This L.A. Story is not about the brothers Menendez, the slashings of ex-spouses, babes killed in drive-bys, murdered models and the Angeles National Forest turned into a cemetery of shallow graves. These are hideous, insane crimes. Yet they generally are prosecuted well and swiftly, and wound only a small population.

I’m raging on behalf of our millions who are being nibbled to death by petty criminals.

Despite recent reports that violent crime is down, fingers wag everywhere. Don’t use auto-tellers at night. Don’t leave cellular phones on a car seat. Don’t answer the front door to strangers. Don’t leave children unattended. Or luggage. And ask the cop, meter reader, fire inspector, paper boy and Greenpeace volunteer for ID.

Avoiding hurt is pretty much Hobson’s choice. Deny, tolerate, roll over or play dead. Trust your well-being to neighborhood watchers. Give up that Rolex and have faith in your insurance company. Take a pepper-spray course and buy an ugly dog. Or carry a concealed weapon, keep jogging and shoot the next tagger who waves a screwdriver.

*

As a metropolitan paranoia, as an angry frustration, it’s a constant dripping wearing away Los Angeles.

Until life in our big city has descended to this:

When it comes to keeping us safe from natural-born killers and biblical disasters, the LAPD probably does it better than Jack Webb.

But down the food and felony chain, expect minimal interest and even less action when our purses are snatched, bodies assaulted, cars stolen, cell phones cloned, homes burgled, credit cards forged, spouses mugged, and cash registers looted. It’s crime without punishment; a carte noir for those who know police response to lesser crimes means sometime after lunch, which allows enough time to empty Ft. Knox and be on the next plane to Boston.

I do not blame the police.

I know their frustrations with anorexic budgets and ever-fattening workloads. I understand concerns with dud equipment and bulging jails leaking repeat killers. I imagine their disgust at working a slimy subculture of child molesters, domestic violence, gangbangers who dis in four languages, slandering lawyers, self-serving politicians and commentators who will never be shot at or puked on for $3,000 a month.

But where is the easing of our fears?

* Start with the night I was followed home by guys in a junkyard Camaro that didn’t belong in a suburb where cars do not have mismatched fenders.

Left, right, then left again. A dozen turns on serpentine back streets and their intentions were quite clear. I doubled back, screeched around a short block and froze the Camaro in my brights.

I got a perfect description of car, occupants and license plate. Then got the hell out of there.

Minutes later, the information was given to the LAPD.

Two weeks later, nobody had been located, nobody had been questioned. Nobody cared.

* This summer, garbage cans rattled at 3 a.m. A scruffy van was parked outside the house with a man and two women sifting through trash. Not for cans. But for scraps of paper.

Aha, breathed Sherlock Dean. This was a crime I’d read about. Bad guys scavenge credit card receipts or billings and use the names and numbers to make fraudulent telephone purchases.

As this equal-opportunity team worked the street, I snuck outside for a distant look at them and a close examination of the van and its Virginia license plate.

Suspicions and information were telephoned to the LAPD. No report was taken, no detectives called. Not even months later when my Visa card was clobbered for $300 worth of pastries and Avon cosmetics.

Avon and the pastry people and I went snooping. Even got names and delivery addresses. An LAPD bunco detective said he wasn’t interested. For $300, he said, it’s Visa’s problem.

* My cell phone has been cloned six times in two years and LA Cellular is out about $6,000. Nobody caught. My street has been worked twice by car radio thieves. Nobody in custody.

My home has been vandalized, burglarized and the dog beaten bloody with a piece of lumber. No suspects.

*

Last week, midnight visitors to my driveway shoved a rock through the car window and resolved the problem with the cloned phone. They stole the phone.

The first cop at LAPD’s West Valley division was impatient, unyielding, jaded, bored, uncaring. No, he couldn’t take a report on the phone. No, he wouldn’t send anyone to the house. No, nothing could be done until I visited the station.

And if I insisted on challenging his authority, especially this close to a shift change, he’d be happy to pass me and the buck to the watch commander.

(Presumed dialogue: “Hey, sarge. Got a civilian here with his knickers in a knot. You want to set him straight? Switching PO’d taxpayer over to you.”)

The sergeant was OK. Patient. Realistic about what little could be done, laughed with me and was flexible enough to twitch the rules and transfer me to Officer Chris Cavazos.

She heard me out. Even took a report over the phone and sent me an additional information form to fill out in case I discovered more than the phone had been ripped off.

You’ve got to be new to the department, I said.

“I am,” she replied. “How could you tell?”

Because you’re concerned. Because I hear no cynicism.

“I hope I can stay that way,” said Cavazos.

I pray she does.

Because there are no cops on our corners.

The thin blue line is stretched so skinny it’s turning transparent.

Accused killer Glen Rogers’ early crime was a petty burglary that went unprosecuted.

Nicole Brown Simpson wondered why she called police eight times and nothing was done to end the abuse.

We cannot expect miracles and instant turnovers.

We do deserve a police department that is allowed to care and work, to protect and serve.

The Census Bureau reports that for every new resident arriving in the Los Angeles area, three leave.

It follows that, like Detroit, we could eventually become one of America’s safest cities. Because everybody will have left.