LAPD Eliminating 3 of 4 Valley Units

The Los Angeles Police Department will eliminate three of its four specialized units in the San Fernando Valley this month as part of its effort to put more patrol officers in the field.

The Valley redeployment, part of a citywide plan announced last week, was described in detail Tuesday by Valley Deputy Chief Michael J. Bostic.

“Our job is responding and preventing crime, and those units are investigating crime,” Bostic said during a meeting with Van Nuys business owners.

“What they do is important, but I still think patrol is more important,” he said.

Chief Bernard C. Parks has ordered the redeployment, to take effect by Dec. 17, in response to an increase in violent crime and an attrition rate that has left the department with 800 fewer officers than three years ago.

Currently, 28% of the Valley officers are involved in non-patrol duties. The redeployment will lower that to 15%, Bostic said.

The Valley bureau will eliminate three units that handle cases out of all five Valley LAPD divisions. They are the sex crimes Registration Enforcement and Compliance Team (REACT), Covert Operations to Battle Recidivist Activities (COBRA), a plainclothes surveillance team and the Information Reporting Office (IRO), which fills out crime reports via telephone.

Twenty-six officers in these units will be put back in patrol, and five detectives will be reassigned to other investigative posts.

Sex crimes detectives will take on the additional work of REACT. Work done by COBRA will be picked up by the Special Investigation Section (SIS), another surveillance team that handles cases throughout the city.

The phone calls on such incidents as burglaries, auto theft and stolen cell phones that IRO now handles will be transferred to officers at the front desk. Officer Telly Epperson, who has been with IRO for two months, sees a problem with this move.

“People who walk into the stations are going to have to wait 10 times as long,” because the officers at the front desk will have to handle additional phone calls, Epperson said.

With car theft a major problem here, the Valley auto theft team--Community Effort in Combating Auto Theft (CECAT)--will be retained, but seven people on the 11-member team (which includes investigators from the California Highway Patrol and Department of Motor Vehicles) will be reassigned, Det. Kenneth Belt said.

Except for the sex crimes unit, the other special teams are based at the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division and Valley headquarters. The sex crime unit was founded in 1997 and is based at the Foothill Division.

COBRA, created in 1983, is the oldest Valley team. CECAT began in 1988 and IRO in 1996.