Crime Maps Are Public, Experts Say

A day after Los Angeles police officials said they would stop releasing crime maps to neighborhood groups, some legal experts said they doubted the department had the right to do so.

“Information such as this, compiled by the Police Department, ought to be fully available under the [city’s] freedom of information ordinance unless there is a specific exception,” said Doug Mirell, a Los Angeles 1st Amendment lawyer. “I am unaware of any exception that would apply to this.”

The plan to halt distribution of the maps drew criticism from Neighborhood Watch and homeowners groups, who have viewed them as a helpful tool in combating crime. But police contend they are so detailed as to compromise enforcement efforts, and potentially even to endanger crime victims and witnesses.

Mirell and other legal experts said the department is under no obligation to create the color-coded maps, which include symbols depicting where certain types of crimes have been committed recently. But once it does, according to Mirell, the maps become public records under city law and thus “open to inspection.”

The city ordinance, like state and federal public information laws, allows information to be withheld if it pertains to investigations, ongoing litigation, or might lead to an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” among other exceptions. Therefore, police officials could argue that one specific crime or another should not be plotted on the map, several attorneys said, though that would probably lessen their usefulness to police officers.

But, the attorneys said, it would be difficult for the Police Department to defend the wholesale withholding of the maps.

“While there may be concerns about having such maps requested too frequently . . . I don’t think they can simply ban the information,” said Robin Toma, chairman of the Asian Pacific Islander Advisory Council to the Los Angeles Police Commission.

Others, though, said they felt keeping the maps secret was legal, considering some of the exceptions to public information law.

“The sharing of detailed maps doesn’t lend itself to crime-fighting,” said a city government source well-versed in police matters who asked not to be named. “I believe that there’s enough legal precedent to back the LAPD’s withholding of the detailed maps.”

“This is a healthy discussion to have in the department. This is the issue we grapple with as we release information,” said Cmdr. David Kalish, an LAPD spokesman. “If you’re the victim of a home-invasion robbery, you may not want to have that information made public. On the other hand, if you live in the neighborhood, you may want to know all the specifics of this crime.”

Officers will still be allowed to distribute information on the number and types of crimes committed in a neighborhood, so long as they are not plotted on maps.

While homeowners continued to criticize the plan Thursday, others, including Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick, chairwoman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, supported the move.

Not only could the maps hint to criminals where police might be concentrating their efforts, Chick said, but they may unfairly taint the image of an area or lower property values.

“I thought they were not a good tool to convey the nature of a neighborhood,” Chick said, adding that she had expressed concerns over public distribution of the maps more than a year ago. “Fear is a strong emotion. And when you look at a picture of your neighborhood and see dots all over the place, that really can induce fear.”

Even some police officers, however, said the proposal would be counterproductive and called it the latest effort by Police Department administrators to undercut community-based policing programs.

“I think it’s a bad message to send to the community,” said Dennis Zine, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League. “How do we solve problems together if we don’t tell them what the problems are in the first place?”

Zine also said that the practice of distributing the maps has been around for decades, noting that he handed out crime maps when he worked as a patrol officer in West Los Angeles during the 1970s.

Critics say the new map policy is but the latest change proposed by the current police administration to fuel the San Fernando Valley’s secession movement.

A plan by Chief Bernard C. Parks to put senior lead officers, currently the key police contacts for local residents, back out on the street as patrol officers and mentors for rookie cops, touched a nerve last fall, said Richard Close, chairman of Valley VOTE, a group that is calling for an independent study of Valley cityhood.

“The whole issue of cityhood is driven in part because the city is so huge and so bureaucratic,” said Close, who favors secession. “The senior lead officer is an attempt to make one person accountable to a community and it’s been very effective.”

“When they don’t listen to what the community wants it fuels secession even more,” added Zine, who is also vice chairman of the city’s Charter Commission.