Homicide Bureau to Close

Ten years after it was formed to investigate murders in what was then Los Angeles County’s bloodiest swath, the Police Department’s South Bureau homicide division will be dismantled and its detectives sent back to neighborhood stations, officials said Monday.

The dramatic drop in homicides over the past several years has diminished the need for such a large, centralized detective bureau, police officials said.

“This reflects a positive change in the community,” said Cmdr. David J. Kalish, an LAPD spokesman.

Kalish said the move should not affect the level of service that residents in South Bureau receive. He added that the change will increase accountability at the local police stations and bring detective functions at South Bureau in line with the rest of the LAPD.

But some community members, academicians and detectives said they are deeply concerned about the change, which Chief Bernard C. Parks has been considering for several months.

“Closing it for a lack of business sounds like good news,” said UCLA professor Eric H. Monkkonen, who studies homicide statistics and trends. “But I think homicide resources should stay high. It’s a good investment. They shouldn’t close [the bureau] until they’re able to solve 95% of their cases.”

Last year, there were 150 homicides in South Bureau, 105--or 70%--of them were solved.

Of the 61 homicide detective positions at South Bureau, 26 will remain in the area. The remaining 35 positions--many of which were temporarily assigned to South Bureau--will be allocated to stations in other parts of the city. The change is scheduled to be finalized by Sept. 25, police officials said.

Housed in an underground, windowless office at the south end of the Crenshaw Martin Luther King Shopping Plaza, the bureau was created in 1989 when the murder rate was skyrocketing. It is a considered a hard-working squad of detectives who largely work gang- and drug-related homicides--some of the most difficult cases to solve. They frequently have to pump their contacts in street gangs for clues and convince reluctant witnesses to come forward with information.

In the early 1990s, there were so many murders that if the bureau had been a separate city it would have ranked 10th in the nation in homicides. In those days, overwhelmed detectives juggled 20 or more cases a year. It was not uncommon for the annual death toll to exceed 400, making it one of the most murder-ridden areas in the nation. The situation was so dire in 1995 that the FBI teamed up with South Bureau detectives for about three years to help investigate homicides.

In the past several years, the caseload has been greatly reduced. Currently, two-person detective teams handle about five slayings a year.

Police and law enforcement experts attribute the steady decrease in homicides in South Bureau and elsewhere to a number of possible factors, including a stronger economy, stabilization of the drug trade, stiffer sentencing laws, improved police tactics, periodic truces among street gangs and a decrease in the number of young males in the most crime-prone age group. LAPD officials also point out that the force has grown by 2,000 officers since 1992, so that more officers are patrolling the streets.

The lighter workloads have given homicide detectives more time to work on cases and, as a result, improved the percentage of cases solved. The drop in crime has also allowed detectives to go back and investigate older cases that remained unsolved.

But in police work, resources are always scarce. For several years, South Bureau has been considered a sacred cow whose detectives could not be tapped to help out when other areas or detectives needed it.

“We’re heavily over-deployed,” said Lt. John Dunkin, a supervisor in South Bureau, explaining Parks’ decision to close the unit and have detectives work out of neighborhood police stations like the department does in other parts of the city.

“It makes sense,” Dunkin said. “I’m a little saddened to see it close, but nothing is forever.”

One reason for the change, officials said, is to increase the detectives’ accountability to division captains, who are frequently evaluated by police managers. Under the current system, South Bureau homicide detectives are not accountable to area captains, who work in other locations.

Det. Pete Razanskas, who has been at South Bureau Homicide since its inception, says there are advantages to both systems, but he prefers keeping all the detectives at a central location because there is more manpower available and investigators can easily share information.

“At a multiple murder or a homicide where a lot of detectives are needed, we’ve got a lot more detectives now that we can send to the scene right away, which is a critical time in a murder investigation,” he said. “Also, the bad guys don’t pay attention to lines of maps. They travel back and forth between divisions. Now, we can easily share information about weapons, vehicles and criminal associates. That’s a big plus.”

A few months ago, a man killed his wife and then fled with the children. The detectives were concerned that the children’s lives were in danger. South Bureau was able to dispatch numerous detectives immediately. They found the suspect a few hours later and rescued the children. Under the new system, Razanskas said, they might not have been able to move so quickly.

There are advantages, however, to the new system, Razanskas said, including greater daily contact with uniformed officers and gang investigators.

“Now we have to go to them,” he said. “In the divisions, as they come on watch, they’ll be able to stop by your desk and ask you who you’re looking for and discuss your cases with you and do quick follow-ups.”

Det. Rick Gordon, who joined South Bureau Homicide six years ago, agreed that there are benefits to both systems. But reassigning 35 detectives out of homicide is a mistake, he said.

“We have about 1,400 unsolved homicides from 1985 to the present, and a lot of them are great cases,” Gordon said. “We’re losing so many homicide detectives, a lot of these cases will have to be shelved. We should use these detectives, take advantage of the drop in the murder rate and go after these unsolved cases.”

Det. Marcella Winn said there were advantages to having the homicide bureau separate from the division stations and next to a mall.

“A lot of witnesses felt comfortable stopping by to talk, where they might not have felt at ease at a typical police station,” said Winn, who has been assigned to South Bureau since 1994. “That helped us at times.”

Norma Johnson, a victim’s assistance coordinator at the 77th Division station, said she believes the decision is bad for the community and bad for the victims’ families.

“This is another example of nobody paying attention to the victims,” she says. “The decision was made by taking into account what’s best for the LAPD, not what’s best for the homicide survivors or the community.”

The system, she said, is “fragmented enough already.” Family members are accustomed to dealing with detectives at South Bureau. Now they will have to deal with another bureaucratic change and possibly start all over with a new set of homicide detectives.

“At the divisions, the families will realize there won’t be as many detectives around to help them,” she said. “The detectives will be preoccupied with the fresh murders and won’t have time to deal with the cold cases.”

Paulette Hawkins, whose daughter, Cherie, was shot to death five years ago, was disappointed when she heard about the change.

“I have to start all over again,” she said. “Now I know where to go and who to talk to about my daughter’s murder. Closing South Bureau makes it worse for people like me pursuing unsolved murders.”