SPECIAL REPORT * Despite reassurances by the LAPD, which is changing or ending two programs credited with helping slash crime and make streets safer in what is still the West Coast’s worst open drug market, residents wonder. . .Will Fear Again Rule Neighborhood?

Four years ago, the city of Los Angeles undertook an unprecedented effort to salvage the Alvarado corridor, a once fashionable neighborhood west of downtown that degenerated over the years into the West Coast’s largest, most violent market for illegal drugs.

The Los Angeles Police Department pumped about 120 additional officers into the area, turning it into a laboratory for a law enforcement strategy that melded traditional police task forces with community-based programs formed to address the “quality of life” block by block.

At the same time, other city departments, which for years had ignored pleas by police and neighborhood activists, finally began to grapple with the widespread urban decay that had contributed to the area’s high crime rate--cutting, for example, the time it took to get streets repaired, buildings inspected and trees trimmed.

Today, arrest records and experts’ assessments indicate that the Alvarado corridor is still the West Coast’s largest drug bazaar, but it isn’t what it used to be: the illicit equivalent of a pharmaceutical outlet mall. Reports of violent crime have declined in each of the last four years. The number of homicides has plummeted from 149 in 1992 to 52 in 1997 in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, which polices the corridor. Crimes of many sorts have fallen even more dramatically within the two-square-mile corridor.

But whether the city can extend the substantial gains of the last four years is uncertain. As part of his drive to reorganize the Police Department and hold his commanders more accountable, Chief Bernard C. Parks is altering or dismantling two of the most popular and successful programs that have helped reverse the tide in the corridor.

His approach includes moving the officers in charge of community-based policing back into patrol cars--a citywide policy--and terminating the nearly 2-year-old Narcotics Enforcement Team, which put 10 to 12 extra patrol officers per shift on the streets of the Alvarado corridor. The team was disbanded this weekend.

Despite assurances from Parks that police service will improve in the long run, some local activists and Neighborhood Watch leaders who have spearheaded anti-crime efforts are not so sure.

“Anyone can see that these programs have worked,” said Bertha Wooldridge, president of Westlake Protectors, one of the largest Neighborhood Watch groups in the corridor. “Police visibility will be gone, and drugs might get to be as blatant as they were before. We cannot let our guard down.”

The corridor lies within two of the city’s poorest and most neglected neighborhoods--Pico-Union and Westlake. It is bordered by 3rd Street on the north, Pico Boulevard on the south, Union Avenue on the east and Hoover Street to the west. Alvarado Street divides the area. In the middle is venerable MacArthur Park.

When the drug market peaked in the early 1990s, more people were murdered, robbed and assaulted in and around the corridor than in any other part of Los Angeles.

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Drug dealers, many of them gang members, openly worked the major streets and intersections, where they hailed passing motorists, including Mayor Richard Riordan during an official tour with the neighborhood’s councilman, Mike Hernandez.

Customers poured in from everywhere back then, and their BMWs, Chevrolets and Toyotas blocked traffic as they queued up to buy. Shantytowns of homeless addicts sprang up overnight. Law enforcement was so overwhelmed that frustrated citizens tried in vain to disrupt the market themselves with baseball bats, bullhorns and spotlights.

“It was as if the world had gone mad,” said Sgt. Brian P. Gilman, who was assigned to the corridor in the early 1990s. “I remember all the people who milled around MacArthur Park at night looking for crack. Through the smoke and haze of the bonfires, they looked like something out of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ or ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ ”

Police sweeps of that park--once home to more than 1,000 addicts, drug dealers and transients--provided only temporary relief, because arrested traffickers were soon replaced by a new crop of dealers. Worse, the crackdowns spread drug dealing into the surrounding neighborhoods.

After a slow start, things began to change in Rampart, the busiest of the LAPD’s 18 divisions. The frequent turnover of station commanders was halted. Audits indicated that the station was 50 sworn officers short of its full complement of 300, a situation that was corrected. Eventually, that staffing was increased to 400, not counting the Narcotics Enforcement Team members, who were on loan to Rampart from the other 17 divisions.

In September 1995, the LAPD launched a series of drug and anti-gang task forces in the corridor that lasted until July 1996. About 700 people were arrested. Reported robberies dropped 31%, burglaries declined 28%, assaults dropped 9% and car thefts were reduced 17%.

The downward trend has continued to this day, helped along by a 1997 court injunction restricting the activities of 18th Street, the largest gang in Southern California.

“Four years ago, we committed ourselves to cleaning up the area,” said Capt. Nick Salicos, Rampart’s commander for 4 1/2 years. “It has been very difficult. Personnel is limited. We’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul. Now people are telling me it is better than 10 years ago.”

Part of that improvement can be attributed to community-based policing as practiced by the department’s senior lead officers and the Narcotics Enforcement Team, which maintained an intense and visible police presence in the corridor.

Until now, the department’s 182 senior lead officers have been responsible for making community-based policing work on the street. Instead of making arrests and solving specific cases, their main assignment has been to eliminate the conditions that contribute to crime.

Senior lead officers acted as liaisons between the public and the department. In the Alvarado corridor they tackled such problems as a robbery-plagued bus stop and public nuisances, like abandoned buildings that were havens for drug users and the homeless.

Senior Lead Officer Teresa M. Velez helped revitalize the intersection of 7th Street and Burlington Avenue, which had been overrun by transients and drug dealers.

Two blocks away, she coordinated the efforts of at least eight city and state agencies to raze Hope House, an abandoned halfway house on South Bonnie Brae Street that had become home to 200 transients and drug addicts. The city is trying to establish Hope and Peace Park at the site.

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The Police Department is in the process of returning Velez and the other senior lead officers to patrol. Parks wants their old duties to be shared by all patrol officers and their sergeants in an attempt to infuse the whole department with the community-based policing philosophy.

The chief says he hopes to avoid the lack of support for community-based policing and internal resentment that can result from a “split force,” which assigns some officers to community-based duties while the vast majority of their colleagues perform traditional roles.

“Senior lead officers should not be the only ones who do community-based policing,” Parks said. “We need to spread it through the department to be more effective. Specialized officers or units are not always the answer.”

Critics question whether patrol officers and sergeants will have time to perform their new duties in addition to making arrests, maintaining order and solving individual crimes. Some fear that the police will become less accessible under the new policy.

“I have mixed feelings about the changes,” said Tom Coyle, an executive of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. and former chairman of Westlake Neighborhood Watch. “If community-based policing is still given a priority and the sergeants and officers attend meetings with the public, then I think the plan can work.”

But Coyle said he doubts that officers will have time for community-based policing when they are swamped by an inordinate number of crime reports and calls for service in a division whose crime rate is still high.

“It looks like they are taking away the catalysts that have helped make the gains possible,” Coyle said. “It used to take six or seven hours to get a patrol car to respond to a burglary. There are so many radio calls in Rampart Division, officers will have little time to do anything else.”

In response to such concerns, Parks said sergeants will have more clout in getting city departments to respond because of their higher rank. The public can still bring concerns to station commanders or to a senior lead officer under the reorganization plan, he added.

“We are going to slowly walk the public through these changes, so that no one is left behind,” the chief said.

While the department remakes the duties of the senior lead officer, it has done away with the Narcotics Enforcement Team, which some supporters called a model of community-based policing. The experimental program was designed to help push drug dealing off the street by creating an obvious police presence.

The team, which took the field in April 1996, was made up of 22 officers supervised by three narcotics detectives. The team patrolled a shifting square-mile area of the corridor.

The job was mostly nuts and bolts police work, two shifts per day, five days a week. Team members gathered intelligence for narcotics investigators, broke up drug deals, monitored gang members and checked out suspicious circumstances. Their patrol cars were like plow horses, going up and down the blocks.

“You’re not going to make the ‘French Connection’-type of bust in this unit,” said Det. Rick De Martino, head of the operation, before it ended. “When we are on the street, people aren’t afraid to get out of their homes. They are able to get their laundry and shopping done without dope dealers and gangbangers bothering them.”

Since the team appeared on the corridor’s streets, reports show, serious crimes--especially robberies and assaults--have dropped 8 to 10 percentage points more than in the rest of the Rampart Division. In 1996 alone, Rampart reported a 27.6% decline in reports of eight serious crimes, from murder to burglary. In the areas patrolled by the Narcotics Enforcement Team, the drop was 34.5%.

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But as he prepares to hold his field commanders more accountable, Parks, as a matter of fairness, wants all officers on loan to other divisions throughout the department returned to their original assignments.

“People think [the Narcotics Enforcement Team is] a good concept, but it took resources away from other divisions that need resources,” the chief said. “We need to let the bureaus decide how to use their resources before we ask them to give up their resources.”

Parks said that if the Central Bureau, which oversees the Rampart Division, wants to, it can come up with mini-teams to replace the Narcotics Enforcement Team in the Alvarado corridor. He noted that the bureau has 1,800 officers.

“Central Bureau does not want the problem to return, and it will work to keep the problem down,” Parks said. “The chief of the bureau says he has the resources to deal with the situation.”

In addition, the number of sworn officers in Rampart will remain at the expanded 400.

But community activists, some veteran narcotics officers and Councilman Hernandez, who represents the Pico-Union and Westlake areas, contend that the narcotics team was one of the major reasons drug-related crime dropped in the corridor. They did not want it to go, considering that the corridor has the worst drug problem in the city.

“We’ve managed to get the lid back on the boiling pot,” said former Westlake Neighborhood Watch chief Coyle. “The number of hands is now slipping off the pot. It’s getting harder and harder to keep the lid on.”

Hernandez, who has worked to bring more city services, commercial development and police officers to his district, said he would try to have the Narcotics Enforcement Team reinstated. “It’s effective, and the need exists,” he said. “You solve problems by dealing with them until they are solved.”

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Narcotics agents say drug trafficking still pervades the corridor, and could mushroom on the streets again if law enforcement is reduced. Felony drug arrests in the Rampart Division have actually been climbing, from 3,393 in 1992 to 3,785 in 1996, some of the highest figures in the department.

In many parts of the corridor all it takes is a nod or a hand sign to the right person and a dealer will emerge from around a corner or the alcove of a business. Buyers still cruise certain blocks in their cars, flashing $20 bills to get the attention of dealers.

“It’s better than it used to be, but it’s still horrible out there,” said Det. George Lusby, who heads an undercover narcotics unit in Rampart. “There certainly is the potential for the reemergence of open dealing on the street.”

Another veteran narcotics officer, who requested anonymity, was more blunt. “We’ve been lucky to have [the team] for two years. Without it, the corridor could revert to the way it was. I give it a month.”

A few weeks ago, during a meeting at Esperanza Elementary School in the heart of the corridor, the commander of the Rampart Division tried to dispel some of these worries in front of 25 concerned citizens and Neighborhood Watch leaders. Parks’ proposals would not cripple crime-fighting capabilities, Capt. Salicos said, because other units would assume some of the Narcotics Enforcement Team’s responsibilities.

“We’ve had a phenomenal drop in crime for four years,” Salicos told the group. “Things are going well right now. It’s premature to start gnashing your teeth. Don’t start writing letters to the chief. You will lose credibility.”

But John Mills, who has headed the Los Angeles chapter of More Advocates for Safe Housing for 10 years, still vividly recalls the days when stray bullets from drive-by shootings penetrated the walls of his 10th-floor apartment on Union Avenue. Once, he was almost hit.

“I just don’t know,” he said after the meeting. “In this game, in this town, police visibility means a lot. I wish they would leave things as they are.”