LAPD Plan Draws Line on Crime

During the day, this neighborhood of stucco, garden-style apartment buildings is quiet. Children gather on bikes and eat snow cones from sidewalk vendors. Young mothers with children use supermarket shopping carts to carry their goods on an afternoon’s worth of errands.

But at night, the neighborhood, nicknamed the “Witch’s Hat” because of its shape on the map, keeps Los Angeles police officers busy. As beer drinking increases with the heat, domestic violence escalates. So do other fights and gang gatherings. Drug dealing is constant.

LAPD officials want to hand over this neighborhood, now in the Van Nuys Division, to the Devonshire Division, saying officers there could better control the crime problems because the same drug dealers and gang members found in the Witch’s Hat also plague the east end of the Devonshire Division. They say that extending Devonshire’s boundaries east to Woodman Avenue would ease crowding at the jammed Van Nuys station and balance the workload between the two police jurisdictions.

The proposal by a group of supervisory officers is now being considered by LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks and the Police Commission.

But not everyone is a fan.

Some residents of other neighborhoods in the Devonshire Division are afraid this 1.4-square-mile area of high crime will sap resources and tie up officers, forcing them to neglect the rest of the division’s territory. Devonshire officers already have a slower emergency response time--8.6 minutes compared with a department average of 6.7 minutes--in their extensive division, and adding more territory may hinder officers from reaching their captain’s goal of 7.5 minutes.

“Our Devonshire police have done a wonderful job,” said Charlene Faber, co-president of the North Valley Homeowners Federation with her husband, Don. “But we don’t want anybody to go without protection.”

Police say that won’t happen.

The division has been “promised the adequate number of resources to go along with the annexation,” said Capt. Joseph Curreri of the Devonshire Division. “It shouldn’t negatively affect the current level of service that we provide.”

But Los Angeles Police Department officials acknowledge that all the logistics have yet to be worked out. Capt. Val Paniccia of the Van Nuys Division estimates that 40 to 50 additional employees, including patrol officers, detectives and clerks, would be transferred from Van Nuys to the Devonshire force. There are 450 officers assigned to the Van Nuys Division now, covering an area with about 254,000 residents. Devonshire has 300 officers for about 240,000 residents.

The extra officers would bring space problems, Curreri acknowledges. There are only 20 extra lockers in the men’s room and no extra lockers in the women’s room, he said. The parking lot behind the Devonshire station is already crowded. Some spaces may have to be redrawn to allow for more cars, he said.

The proposed change came up at a meeting of the department brass in May. As police supervisors combed crime charts, analyzing statistics and looking for trends, they noticed clusters of crimes recurring every month in the North Hills and adjacent Panorama City neighborhoods.

The Witch’s Hat, consistently ranked among the three busiest patrol areas in the Van Nuys Division, had become a geographic yo-yo for the two stations.

As officers in Devonshire cracked down on crime on their side of the Pacoima Wash boundary, the dealers and gang members crossed into the Van Nuys Division, they said. As officers in the Van Nuys Division tackled problems, the criminals returned to the Devonshire side.

Two years ago, police set up a joint task force but switched command every six months between Van Nuys and Devonshire. Despite their efforts, crime problems in the neighborhood continue.

“We said, ‘Why are we doing this? Why don’t we put it under one command?’ ” Deputy Chief Michael Bostic said.

The annexation would give each station 11 patrol areas (Van Nuys now has 13, versus Devonshire’s nine) and would spread out patrol officers.

Ernie Jimenez, a senior lead officer who patrols North Hills, said he thinks the annexation could only be positive for both sides.

He said the crime problems in North Hills are unusual for the Devonshire Division, which, before the North Hills area was annexed in 1987, was dubbed “Club Dev” because of its middle- to upper-middle-class homes and lack of violent crime.

The gang strife and drug deals in North Hills more closely resemble those across the border in the Witch’s Hat, he said.

“We would be able to share resources,” Jimenez said. “I would not be limited to one neighborhood or have to stay within my boundaries. We would be able to roam all the way around.”

Officer George Flores, Jimenez’s counterpart in the Witch’s Hat, said that when one division handles a problem area, officers learn from experience who the criminals are.

But Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson said that transferring officers to the Devonshire Division is not the solution.

“It reduces the capability of the same level of service for the rest of the district,” he said.

If the annexation is approved by the chief and the Police Commission, it would not be the first time the Devonshire Division picked up a portion of Van Nuys’ area. Five square miles of a high-crime area that runs along Roscoe Boulevard from the Golden State Freeway to the Pacoima Wash was added in 1987.

Bernson said that instead of making the divisional boundary change, a greater effort should be made to find a site for a new police station, which he said is sorely needed in the northeast Valley.

Money to build a new station could come either from the city budget or from a bond measure. But voters who passed a $176-million bond measure in 1989--some of which, they were told, would fund a new station in the mid-Valley--may be too disillusioned to open their wallets again, Bernson said.

The proposed new station near Van Nuys Airport was never built. Police and city officials said they had underestimated the cost.

Bernson said police should look for a temporary site, such as the vacant Air National Guard base at Van Nuys Airport or empty building space along Sepulveda Boulevard.

Parks estimated at last week’s council meeting that such a venture would cost $5 million to $7 million.

Bernson said “that’s not a lot of money” when residents consider how important law enforcement is to the community.