Top Cops to Feel More Pressure

Charting a new course for the Los Angeles Police Department, Chief Bernard C. Parks said Tuesday he is one week away from implementing a rigid accountability system aimed at holding high-ranking officers responsible for reducing crime in the city.

Borrowing from a policing model that has been credited with reducing crime in New York City, Parks said the LAPD will use up-to-the minute crime statistics to identify problem areas in the San Fernando Valley starting Oct. 22. Once such spots are delineated, commanding officers must map out detailed strategies to combat crime there or face negative performance evaluations.

“The Los Angeles Police Department is undergoing the most sweeping changes in its modern history,” Parks wrote in a letter to police commissioners explaining his plan. “These changes involve not only how the city will be policed, but to what extent management will be involved in the process and to what degree it will be held accountable.

“Command accountability will be at the forefront of the new Los Angeles Police Department’s efforts to facilitate community-based government in Los Angeles,” he added.

By January, he said, the entire LAPD will operating under the program dubbed FASTRAC: Focus, Accountability, Strategy, Teamwork, Response and Coordination.

LAPD officials said their program will go further than New York’s model, holding bureau and station commanders responsible not only for crime reductions, but also for citizen complaints, traffic problems, response times, overtime expenditures, use of force issues, internal grievances and other issues.

*

Parks’ program has the support of many city officials, including Mayor Richard Riordan, who several months ago arranged for then-Deputy Chief Parks and other department brass to see a demonstration of the New York model.

Parks and other LAPD officials said they were impressed by the way top New York cops were held to answer for crime problems under their commands. Like New York, Parks said, the LAPD will crack down on violent crimes as well as petty and “quality of life” violations, such as vandalism, graffiti and loitering.

The theory behind such a policing style, criminologists say, is that minor crimes left unattended create an atmosphere in which serious criminal offenses are more likely to occur. In New York, crime dropped significantly after the policing tactic was adopted, but it had an unpleasant side effect: Citizen complaints of officer misconduct rose.

LAPD officials said they are mindful of that issue and plan to hold top officers responsible for any increases in complaints, just as they would be for a jump in crime. In effect, LAPD officials said they are trying to adopt the hard-nosed policing style of New York in a way that is compatible with 1991 Christopher Commission reforms aimed at making the department more sensitive to community concerns.

*

“The Christopher Commission recommendations sent us on a path that we have no intention of straying from,” Deputy Mayor Joe Gunn said.

Cmdr. Dave Kalish, the LAPD’s spokesman, said FASTRAC is “a dynamic work in progress” that is essentially “community policing with accountability.”

Despite support among city policymakers, Parks’ announcement comes as he is facing criticism from some community leaders for dismantling elements of the community policing efforts by shifting officers who worked as neighborhood liaisons back to patrol work.

Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph D. McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, has said he is not a fan of the policing style being embraced by the LAPD.

“In-your-face policing is more likely to increase complaints against the police than it is to generate the citizen support needed to prevent crime,” he said recently.

Former LAPD Chief Willie L. Williams also expressed skepticism about the New York style, favoring instead what he said was a more resident-friendly, community policing approach.

The LAPD’s shift in strategy also comes as New York’s police work is coming under criticism in the wake of accusations that several officers tortured a handcuffed Haitian immigrant in a police station bathroom, allegedly sodomizing him with a plunger handle.

*

Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, who is coordinating the FASTRAC effort, said the incident in New York, if substantiated, is the result of bad cops, not an indictment of New York’s policing style.

When FASTRAC is up and running citywide, crime analysts in each of the area stations will download statistics daily that will break down modus operandi, time of day of similar crimes and locations of crimes.

Once a week, a commanding officer from one of the bureaus will meet with department brass to discuss the crime patterns and trends in the areas and find out what is working and what is not.

“These are not going to be dog and pony shows,” Kroeker said. “These are going to be very serious discussions. Accountability is the key.”