LAPD Plans to Return Lead Officers to Patrol

In a move opposed by community activists, the Los Angeles Police Department’s popular senior lead officers may be relieved of their primary community liaison duties and assigned to the field as soon as next month.

LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Bostic said negotiations were continuing with the Police Protective League, but he predicted that senior lead officers citywide will be back on patrol “sometime right after the first of the year.”

Under the plan, first announced in October 1997, the department’s approximately 160 senior lead officers were reassigned to patrol, where they trained junior officers in community policing techniques, as well as helped organize community policing efforts.

Patrol sergeants assumed some of the former senior lead officers’ duties, such as maintaining community contacts and dealing with quality of life issues. Sergeants also were charged with ensuring that officers under them adhered to the community policing philosophy.

“People think their senior lead officer is going to disappear, and that’s just not true,” Bostic said.