Don’t Blame Cops for Crime in L.A.

Re “A Constant Dripping Wears Away at Los Angeles” (Dec. 19): This commentary by Paul Dean was another example of frustration with petty crime victimization suffered by residents of Los Angeles. As is common, while sounding understanding and compassionate about the problems faced by LAPD officers, those same officers get the brunt of the complaints. You see the officer on the street as the symbol of government. No one sees the city attorney or the district attorney who prosecutes--or refuses to or can’t prosecute--criminal cases. No one sees judges or juries who set criminals free.

As an officer, I refuse to be blamed for the crimes that plague this city. And I will attempt to educate Dean on the realities of the criminal justice system and what the police can and can’t do.

Car burglaries are too common and too numerous to have officers do “house calls,” as Dean put it. Those are reportable by phone, and the victims are welcome to make an appointment at the station for fingerprint investigation. Most of the time, victims don’t have the time or refuse to do so. Without fingerprints, there’s almost no chance of ever catching anyone. And unless we catch someone inside a vehicle, in the driver’s seat, the D.A. refuses to prosecute for car theft.

Dean wrote of the night he was followed home “by guys in a junkyard Camaro that didn’t belong in a suburb where cars don’t have mismatched fenders. . . . Their intentions were quite clear.” A perfect description of the car and license plate were given to the LAPD, and after two weeks, “Nobody had been located, nobody had been questioned. Nobody cared.” Well Mr. Dean, from what you wrote in your article, if the LAPD had stopped these people based on the information given, the American Civil Liberties Union would have cared, since there was no crime committed. This is not to say the information wasn’t forwarded to detectives and used as a piece of a puzzle in identifying a pattern of crime and possible suspects involved. Detectives can’t contact everyone who furnishes information, but it is highly appreciated nonetheless.

Now we come to cloned cellular phones. Here the victim is the phone company, not Dean. I’ve made a few arrests of criminals in possession of cloned phones. Trying to get the phone company to provide subscriber information to locate the owner of the phone is an exercise in the Fourth Amendment. The police need a search warrant to get the most basic information from the phone companies because of the right to privacy. Since the phone companies are the victims and they are reluctant to cooperate with the investigation, detectives don’t spend valuable time and resources on these cases.

There is no excuse for impatient, unyielding, jaded, bored and uncaring cops at the other end of an LAPD phone, but come into any LAPD station, sit for a while and see the volume of walk-in traffic and phone calls that are received on a daily basis. Cops are human and sometimes they falter in their manners. Notify a supervisor so that the problem can be dealt with.

ANDRE BELOTTOQ

Los Angeles

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Paul Dean’s article about crime was excellent. It touched what most of us think of when we think of crime. We are not worried about murder. It’s theft and the incidental violence that often accompanies it that concerns us. Sudden death sits in the driveway.

But when the police and politicians do not seem to care should we be surprised? It’s implicit in the market economics we now worship. It’s everyone for himself, not we are all in this together. We are all rugged individualists, are we not? Who will dare raise the taxes necessary to police this region?

In our market economy the losers do not quietly lie down and die. They have a life to live and they are going to live it and we shouldn’t be surprised how they go about it.

BILL KRAUSE

Glendale

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In his commentary, Paul Dean details the indifferent treatment he received from the LAPD when he reported criminal activity. Dean laments that L.A. will eventually become safe “because everybody will have left.”

Some of us have indeed left--for smaller, more efficiently run municipalities.

Take Culver City. Though it is physically surrounded by Los Angeles, the quality of public service we receive is so high we could be living on a different planet.

When a window in my car was smashed by vandals, Culver City promptly dispatched officers to take a report and dust for fingerprints, even though nothing had been stolen. Plus, we have one of the highest-ranked fire departments in the country.

So Dean needn’t move far. Small cities are the answer.

DANA PARKS

Culver City