Mounted Police Used in Crackdown

At the request of the local city councilwoman, mounted police rode into the western San Fernando Valley Thursday to patrol a popular gathering spot for day laborers in what is believed to be the first use of the LAPD’s horseback unit for such a crackdown.

Although improvised hiring areas are a common--and controversial--sight on many street corners in the Los Angeles area, police officials said they could not recall mounted officers ever being sent to police them.

Councilwoman Laura Chick said she asked the LAPD to assign the mounted officers to patrol a long-established day-laborer site on Fallbrook Avenue south of Ventura Boulevard in response to neighbors’ complaints of public drinking, gambling, drug use, thefts, prostitution and other offenses.

Chick denied the mounted police were dispatched to the site to frighten away the day laborers, though that appeared to be the result, with the workers swiftly vanishing.

“The Mounted Unit is an extremely friendly, benign unit, not one meant to intimidate,” Chick said. At the same time, she said, “I want to give a strong message to the community too, and [the horses and officers] are very visible. The community needed to see a response.”

The equestrian unit’s primary mission is crowd control, using the horses’ strength and the officers’ swift mobility and better field of view from the saddle.

During the half-dozen or so years that men seeking work have congregated in the hiring area near the Ventura Freeway offramp, officers on motorcycles, foot, bicycles and in patrol cars all have been dispatched in response to complaints from residents and business owners, Chick said. Sometimes there are more than 100 men [day laborers] at the site, police said.

Recently, however, the number of complaints has grown, with residents saying offenses have escalated from so-called “nuisance crimes” such as urinating in public and blocking sidewalks, to car break-ins, drug dealing and prostitution, said Capt. Val Paniccia of the LAPD’s West Valley Division.

The mounted officers “were a resource that was available,” Paniccia said. “By the time [other units] get out there, most of the people who want to work are gone and those who are left are the ones who are there vandalizing, going over fences and getting drunk.”

Because gathering on a street corner to look for work is not illegal in Los Angeles, Paniccia stressed that the mounted officers were not sent in to disperse the day laborers.

But as soon as the 11 officers unhitched the trailers carrying their horses just after 8 a.m. Thursday, the men milling about the area quickly began walking away. The officers casually nosed the animals down Fallbrook Avenue and by 8:45 a.m., a time when the site would normally have been filled with employers looking for help, the sidewalks were empty.

Sgt. Charles L. Wampler, who patrolled Fallbrook Avenue and Ventura Boulevard from atop a gelding named Captain, said police issued three or four tickets Thursday for infractions such as walking in the roadway. On Monday, the unit’s first day on its new beat, seven people were arrested and six citations issued, he said.

Ricardo, 20, a day laborer from Jalisco, Mexico, who did not want his last name used, said the stepped-up police presence unfairly punished the majority of hard-working job-seekers for the misdeeds of a few.

“We are not all bad,” he said, after abandoning hope of finding any work that day because he left the site when the mounted police appeared.

“Because of one or two, we are all suffering.”

Ricardo said that even though the police were not aggressive in their patrols, the laborers left the area “only because of fear. . . . They worry about the INS,” the federal agency that polices illegal immigration.

Fausto, 27, who also did not want his last name used, said he left when the mounted officers appeared because he mistakenly assumed that he was breaking the law seeking work on the street. He and most of the other men there would be back on that same street today, he predicted.

“We don’t have any other way to pay our rent or support our children,” he said.

But the mounted officers were greeted warmly by residents of the area such as Dawn Anderson and her husband, Darrin, who described themselves as virtual prisoners in their apartment because of what they may encounter outside.

“I feel sorry for these guys, but there have been times when I haven’t wanted to go outside on my day off because I get so many catcalls and the whole street reeks of urine,” Dawn Anderson said.

“There are a few you can tell are trying to get a job, but half you see out here totally drunk at 9 or 10 in the morning,” Darrin Anderson added.

A group of Woodland Hills residents and business owners has been working with Chick and the LAPD to establish an official city-run site in a commercial area where day laborers could register their skills and safely comb job-postings from employers. Such a program already exists in North Hollywood and has significantly cut down on complaints, said Francisco Briones, the city-paid coordinator.

Chick said it was too soon to say whether the officers on horseback would be dispatched to other day-laborer sites in the Valley. The Woodland Hills site is unusual, she said, because of its proximity to houses and apartments.