Public Fear of Crime Proves Elusive Enemy for LAPD

“Our mission is to . . . enhance public safety and to reduce the fear and incidence of crime.”

--Mission statement of the Los Angeles Police Department

Through the 1990s, the Los Angeles Police Department has fulfilled half its mandate. Crime is down dramatically; in some categories such as homicides, the numbers are lower than they have been in more than 25 years.

But the LAPD just as vividly has failed in its other lofty goal: Six years of declining crime have left city residents seemingly more scared, not less.

“The fear of crime is at an all-time high in this city, even though crime is dropping,” Police Chief Bernard C. Parks said in an interview earlier this year.

And although he struck a more upbeat tone about the situation in an interview last week--stressing that he’s noticed the public’s fears abating slightly--Parks emphasized that the problem remains a difficult one for the LAPD.

“I don’t think, by any means, we’ve turned the corner. We have a lot of work to do,” he said. “It is a real problem in the community, and we have not done well in addressing it in the past.”

Despite that realization, police have struggled to find an effective way to minimize, or even gauge, residents’ fear. In fact, the department, in some cases, thrives on the public’s anxiety.

Police officials long ago learned to prey upon fear to pry more money out of the city’s coffers. So while they tell city leaders that they need more than $1.2 billion a year--more than $3 million a day--to fight crime, it’s difficult to tell the public that crime is becoming less of a problem. Earlier this month, in fact, Parks said the city needed to hire 1,000 more officers to guard against a growing crime threat in the future.

Moreover, LAPD officials occasionally find themselves stoking those fears as they try do their jobs and tout their accomplishments. The department issues crime bulletins warning residents that murderers and rapists are prowling their communities--warnings that are intended to protect residents, but often amplify their fears.

And the LAPD eagerly cooperates with a gritty live-action television program that shows cops grappling with some of the city’s slimiest characters. While the show “LAPD: Life on the Beat” may boost the public’s confidence in the police force, it reinforces the notion that violent predators lurk nearby.

“It’s no wonder they can’t fight the fear of crime,” said one City Hall official. “They use it for their own benefit and glamorize it.”

To combat people’s fear, the first response of many top police officials is to point to charts, graphs and reports showing the dramatic drop in violent and petty crimes throughout the city.

“Los Angeles is 74th in the nation in overall crime,” said Cmdr. Dave Kalish--the LAPD’s main spokesman--reading from a single sheet of paper with a simple list of statistics covering 1996. “Atlanta, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington, D.C., and many others are above us. People don’t realize how much crime has dropped around here. . . . Every time I talk to a reporter, I pull out this list.”

Parks employs a similar tactic, proudly telling his Police Commission bosses at their weekly meetings of reductions in crime.

Practically every departmental change Parks has made since taking office last summer has been aimed at improving the LAPD’s crime-fighting and community policing efforts and, by extension, he says, driving down people’s fear of crime.

Among his moves, Parks has:

* Instituted a program similar to one employed successfully in New York that uses up-to-the-minute crime statistics to identify problem areas and better deploy department resources.

* Reorganized the LAPD to increase accountability throughout all ranks, particularly in the area of crime reduction and “community problem-solving.”

* Reassigned specially designated community liaison officers back into patrol and placed the responsibility of community policing on all officers.

* Pressed for community surveys to determine how residents feel about crime and how the LAPD is responding to their concerns.

* Launched an LAPD computer Web site, giving residents access to department crime statistics, phone numbers and information about the agency’s operations.

Additionally, he said that staffing increases pushed by Mayor Richard Riordan have, for the first time in many years, freed patrol officers from constantly “chasing radio calls” and given them more time--up to 40% of their shifts--to concentrate on “community problem-solving.”

All that adds up to a sea change in the LAPD’s approach to the fear of crime, and it grows out of an admission that its efforts in the past have largely failed.

The chief said he hopes to beef up the LAPD’s public relations staff and add more foot and bike patrols to bring cops closer to the public and minimize their fear.

Yet, despite the chief’s initiatives, officers say they are given little direction on how they are supposed to fight something as intangible as the fear of crime.

Officers similarly complained about former Chief Willie L. Williams, saying they had no meaningful direction about how to implement community policing. Now, they often complain that combating crime is one thing, but fighting fear is another.

“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” asked one patrol officer. “We have a hard enough time dealing with real crime, let alone somebody’s fantasy of it.”

Even the head of the police union said he’s unclear what officers are supposed to be doing on that score.

“How do you tell an officer to go out and reduce fear?” Police Protective League President David Hepburn asked. “I guess they have a lot of esoteric ideas, but what do they mean?”

Several LAPD observers say some of the same moves Parks has made to crack down on crime--such as the reassignment of community liaison officers--have alienated many of the department’s staunchest supporters, making them feel more disconnected and alienated from the agency.

“The chief’s actions have caused a lot of apprehension,” said Page Miller, a member of a Neighborhood Watch group who is upset by the transfer of community liaison officers. “We feel like contact with the department is being cut off, and we won’t know what’s happening in our neighborhoods.”

Instead of having any cohesive departmentwide plan to address the fear of crime, it is frequently left up to each officer to find the time and the solutions to reduce the fear of crime.

Some, such as Capt. George Gascon, have moved aggressively.

When officers shot and killed a knife-wielding suicidal man in the Jordan Downs housing project last year, Gascon met with community members, quelling rumors that the police used excessive force.

“The shooting occurred on Saturday,” he said. “I called a whole bunch of people that weekend and we got together first thing Monday morning. . . . It was important to have a dialogue with the community. I didn’t want the problem to fester.

“If you don’t fill in the vacuum, somebody else will, and that’s when fear can get out of hand,” he added.

After the meeting, Gascon invited a couple dozen residents to participate in the LAPD’s shooting simulator, so they could understand what officers experience and appreciate what it’s like to make split-second, life-and-death decisions.

“It’s a two-way street,” says Capt. Jim McDonnell, who until recently coordinated the LAPD’s community policing efforts. “The officers have to take time to understand what the community is feeling and the community has to know what the officers are working with. . . . Our best vehicle to minimize the fear of crime is through communication.”

But all the communication in the world still would not be enough to do the job, he said.

“The police alone cannot impact the fear of crime to the degree that the public may feel we can,” he said. “I don’t think as a city we have a plan to address fear of crime on a city level. . . . The city government needs to be part of the solution.”

That’s a common theme in many of Parks’ stump speeches throughout the city. “The LAPD cannot be the do-all and save-all for the community,” he said recently.

According to Parks, the LAPD has taken on too much responsibility trying to rectify societal ills. He doesn’t believe police should spend their time painting out graffiti, nor does he believe they should be organizing recreational sporting events for youngsters.

“Our job is to make it safe for people to paint out graffiti. . . . It’s our job to make sure the parks are safe for children,” he said.

At community events, in meetings with politicians and during social events, Parks is constantly challenging the other city departments to pitch in and address “quality-of-life issues” such as graffiti abatement, so Los Angeles will become more orderly, cleaner and appear safer to residents.

Essentially, he is asking other agencies to embrace the so-called “broken windows” theory of reducing crime and the fear it creates. The theory, outlined in 1982 by academicians James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, contends that broken windows, litter, graffiti and other signs of disorder show a community in decline and foster an atmosphere of lawlessness. By cracking down on petty crimes, the scholars said, a sense of public safety would be restored and hardened criminals would be less likely to commit crimes.

What Parks has done is endorse that theory but spread responsibility for it to other agencies. Crime will follow decay, Parks says, but decay is not just the Police Department’s problem.

“We have to bring in other city services,” he said. “We can act as a catalyst.”

In New York, police put themselves in the lead role. There, crime has dropped precipitously, and even the most jaded New Yorker will acknowledge the powerful sense of fear abating as well.

Under pressure from Riordan, the LAPD last year adopted a similar model, but cautions that it has far fewer officers than New York to make it work the same way. The LAPD has less than 10,000 officers, while the NYPD has more than 40,000. Because the LAPD has fewer officers and a more sprawling territory, Parks says it is more difficult for the department to throw overwhelming resources at a problem like New York does.

That’s partly why he says the LAPD needs more help from other city agencies.

“Crime and the fear of crime are not just a police problem,” agrees Jeffrey C. Fryrear, acting director of the National Crime Prevention Institute at the University of Louisville. “It’s a problem for the government and community leaders. There needs to be a grass-roots recognition of quality-of-life issues.”

For the most part, however, police throughout the nation are bearing the largest burden for reducing crime and the fear of it. And, by and large, their response on both fronts has been to implement some form of community policing.

“There’s no outline that says this or that format of policing will work in every community. It’s a work in progress.” said Dave Cohen, spokesman for the San Diego Police Department, which has stuck with a neighborhood policing model for the past 10 years. “We’re out there forging ties with the community. That’s how we reduce fear. . . . Crime has been dropping dramatically here, but it doesn’t mean as much to the public unless people feel safer,”

At the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, officials painstakingly survey their “customers” to determine their levels of fear and adjust their police work accordingly.

Parks, like many law enforcement experts and academicians, also blames the media for perpetuating the public’s fear of crime. He said reporters attribute “crime outside the city” to Los Angeles by describing incidents as occurring “in the L.A. Basin, [or] the L.A. region.”

He even goes so far as to accuse CNN of highlighting crime in Los Angeles, while refusing to broadcast stories about crime in Atlanta, where the network is based. A spokeswoman for CNN rejected Parks’ comments as “ridiculous.” Among other stories, the network extensively covered the Atlanta bombings during the Summer Olympics, as well as a rash of abortion-clinic bombings in that city.

As crime changes--becoming more violent and more random--the fear of it grows even as the incidence of it drops, Parks said. And yet, the LAPD still struggles to find a way to ease anxieties.

Lacking other solutions, LAPD spokesman Kalish falls back on his old favorite: The statistics that show Los Angeles is not as dangerous as some other cities.

“Crime,” Kalish said with conviction, “is not as bad as people think.”

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The Series at a Glance

Sunday: A decade of falling crime has not left Americans feeling safer. One reason for that is a coalition of self-interest--politicians, media, police and security companies--that exploits the fear of crime in order to gain from it.

Today: The Los Angeles Police Department is committed to reducing “the fear and incidence of crime.” It has succeeded in one mission but failed in the other.

Tuesday: In one Los Angeles County neighborhood, fear outruns reality, leaving residents uncomfortable in their community even though the statistics suggest that they should be enjoying a sense of security.