Council Wants More Community Policing

Concerned that community policing has faltered in Los Angeles with the reassignment of 180 senior lead officers from the program, a City Council panel asked the LAPD on Monday to develop a new plan for improving the working relationship between officers and residents.

The vote followed the release Monday of a USC survey that found less than half of Los Angeles residents think the LAPD is doing a “good or very good” job. The percentage increases dramatically, researchers said, when residents have more informal contacts with officers, including residents who see officers regularly patrolling their neighborhoods.

While stopping short of calling for the lead officers to be restored to their community liaison jobs, the council’s Public Safety Committee directed Police Chief Bernard Parks to come up with concrete proposals to make sure residents have genuine input into department operations.

And council members hinted that they still may call for the senior lead officers to be restored after hearing nearly two hours of testimony from about 20 neighborhood activists who said the loss of senior lead officers has cut off their contacts with the LAPD.

“My concern is that unless there are some quantifiable results to which the department can point in the very near future--in the next couple of months--that show this change has been very effective, we ought to scrap it and do something else,” Councilman Mike Feuer told LAPD officials.

LAPD Cmdr. Dan Koenig told the panel that the chief spread senior lead officer duties among all patrol officers with closer supervision by sergeants to improve the program.

“The problem is if you have 180 guys doing community policing, 9,400 other guys are going to be saying ‘that’s not my job,’ ” Koenig said.

But Neighborhood Watch activists--including David Trowbridge of the Central Bureau, Page Miller of North Hollywood, Don Schultz of Van Nuys and Steven Wallace of Harbor--told the panel that some crime has increased and community relations have suffered since the change was made.

“It put a face and personal identity on the LAPD for those of us who work to preserve our neigborhoods,” Schultz told the panel.

Added Tony Swan of North Hills, “Unfortunately, tragically, we are going backwards.”

Koenig said he thinks some former senior lead officers who have been assigned to patrol are “submarining” the new program by not being as responsive to the public.

In addition to looking at the senior lead officer program, the study requested by the council panel also seeks to have the LAPD consider giving officers longer assignments in an area.

“When there is a high turnover, that does not foster police-community relations,” Councilman Alex Padilla said.

Council members also voiced concern that community police advisory boards are being dominated by command officers, to the point that some dissidents have left and recently campaigned against a police bond measure.

Cheryl Maxson, a USC professor, told the council panel that a survey by the school’s Social Science Research Institute showed that more informal contact with the public increases the public’s support and trust of the police.

The survey of 1,400 residents in four police divisions found 41% of residents said the police are doing a very good or good job overall, while 48% said they are doing an “OK” job.

But 53% of residents who see officers patrolling regularly and 52% of those who know or talk to officers say police are doing a good or very good job.

The survey found that fear of crime is higher in neighborhoods that are disorderly--where lights are broken, or where there is litter, vandalism, graffiti and abandoned buildings.

In areas served by the West Valley Division, 18% of residents see their neighborhoods in “disorder,” compared with 62% in the Hollenbeck and 72% in the Southeast divisions.

“Most residents don’t know the officers who work in their neighborhood,” the survey report said.

One of the committee recommendations is that the LAPD conduct an annual survey to gauge public opinion on the department’s performance.