Grime Busters

Los Angeles police officers in the west San Fernando Valley have become mired in politics.

But nobody’s complaining.

In a recently created program at the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley station, officers are being instructed to report public nuisances, from potholes to graffiti, to City Councilwoman Laura Chick. Her staff, in turn, directs the appropriate city department to fix the problem.

Flexing a bit of political muscle is turning out to be a quick way to solve a host of nagging neighborhood troubles, one of the goals of the department’s community-based policing, officers say.

“Community policing in its very basic terms is a partnership between the police, the community and other government departments,” said Cmdr. Garrett Zimmon, who oversees the LAPD’s community policing. “This takes it a step further.”

Capt. George Ibarra, West Valley’s patrol captain and creator of the program, calls it community-based government.

The effort is based on the so-called broken windows theory, which asserts that disrepair and decay leads to more serious crime. The godfather of the concept, UCLA management professor James Q. Wilson, said police--and residents--can benefit from some political influence.

“A City Council member is probably more effective than a police sergeant in getting these [problems] resolved,” he said. “It strikes me as a constructive enhancement of community-based policing.”

Officers agree.

“We write up these reports and, in most cases, they’re taken care of in a week,” said Officer John Weiler, who spent Monday morning on patrol. “It works great.”

Weiler and his partner, Analyn Vergara, stopped several times Monday morning, filling out newly created Community Enhancement Request forms, noting graffiti on a concrete wall and the fire hazard posed by a weed-choked lot on Vanalden Avenue.

“If someone drops a cigarette or a match, the whole block goes up,” Weiler said.

Officers throughout the city generally take note of such problems on their beats. But LAPD officials say they seldom get quick results from already overburdened city departments.

Chick said officers need to see the results of their work, “that they’re really making a difference.” Her office notifies West Valley officers when the work is completed. About 80% of neighborhood problems reported by officers are the responsibility of other city departments, LAPD officials say.

Since the program began in February, West Valley officers have logged 563 reports. Of those, most were forwarded by Chick’s office to the city’s graffiti-removal program, Public Works Department and the Building and Safety Department.

“The whole concept of ‘grime leads to crime’ . . . has proven over and over to be true,” Chick said.

As an added incentive, West Valley commanders are keeping a tally of the reports written by officers. When they seek better assignments or promotions, Ibarra said, he will consider their participation in the program.

“What I hope this will become--and I think it will--is an immediate reaction,” Ibarra said. “So officers driving down the street, scanning for anything unusual, will automatically pull over and take these reports.”

With all their radio calls, can police officers afford any time spent writing reports about trash or abandoned cars?

“I think even in a city as under-policed as Los Angeles, there is time to do this because . . . as busy as they are, there is down time,” said Wilson, whose landmark 1982 article “Broken Windows” launched community policing nationwide. “They can devote some of that down time to this effort. We know they’re not going to prevent crime just by driving around in a marked car, so they should be doing something else.”