Council Seeks to Restore Community Policing

In what lawmakers frankly characterize as a test of the Los Angeles Police Commission’s resolve, City Council members on Wednesday called on the panel to order Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to revive the popular community policing program, which placed dozens of officers in direct contact with neighborhood watch groups throughout the city.

The council also voted to ask Mayor Richard Riordan to pressure the commission to reinstate the senior lead officer program, an effort that the chief dismantled a year ago as he explored other community-based policing options.

“I respect the chief’s view that he was trying to do something different,” said Councilman Hal Bernson. “In all due respect, this experiment has failed. . . . The community needs the presence of an officer meeting with them on a regular basis. We need to reinstate the chemistry between the community and that officer.”

On a 10-1 vote, the council urged the commission to take up the issue at its Tuesday meeting. If the commissioners vote against the council, the lawmakers have until July 1--when the new City Charter takes effect--to step in and order Parks to take the action. After July 1, the council will retain only veto power over the Police Commission’s decisions.

Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff said: “Of course we will consider any request from the council.” He added that members of the Independent Review Panel already are studying the matter as part of their investigation of the Rampart scandal and will include their recommendations on the senior lead officer program in their final report.

Amid boos and hisses from the council chamber audience, Councilman Nate Holden was the only lawmaker to publicly oppose the council’s action. He depicted the senior lead officers as politicos who spent their afternoons sipping coffee in the living rooms of community members. He also chastised his colleagues, accusing them of seeking to reinstate the program in an effort to win votes.

“If there’s a shootout in the Valley, where do you want your senior lead officer?” Holden asked. “In someone’s living room or out there fighting criminals?”

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas also opposed the motion, but he left the council meeting before the vote. He said afterward that the Police Department needs to implement a comprehensive community policing strategy and then decide if the senior lead officer program should be revived.

“Obviously, the [senior lead officers] or something comparable would have an important role in a community-based policing program,” Ridley-Thomas said. “But we have the cart before the horse here. I trust the Police Commission will recognize that.”

Deputy Mayor Manuel Valencia, meanwhile, accused the council of staging a “power grab.”

“We already have a police chief,” he said. “We don’t need 11 more police chiefs looking over his shoulder. We don’t need the City Council to become the Police Commission. If the Police Commission wants to remain independent, they should not put this item on their agenda.”

He also said Parks should be given the opportunity to come up with his own plan.

“The chief is looking at creative ways to bring back the most important qualities of the senior lead officer program,” Valencia said. “We need to give him a chance to make that happen.”

Since dismantling the program, Parks has rejected previous calls by public officials to take the department’s 168 senior lead officers off patrol and restore them to their liaison positions. He has argued that he wants all officers, not just a select few, to work closely with the community to solve problems.

Parks also announced two weeks ago that the department was issuing cellular phones to officers so they could be easily accessible to neighborhood leaders.

Council members scoffed at the chief’s efforts, however. The lawmakers arrived at Wednesday’s meeting armed with an opinion from City Atty. James K. Hahn that the commission has the authority to force Parks to reinstate the program.

“This is an opportunity for the Police Commission to show us and the public that it cares about listening to the will of the people and it can and will fulfill its role in overseeing the Police Department,” Councilwoman Laura Chick told her colleagues.

Councilman Joel Wachs said: “It is time for the Police Department to admit it made a mistake. This city and this department has paid a terrible price. . . . Morale in this department is at an all-time low, and public confidence has been undermined by a series of tragic events.

“If there was ever a time we needed to rebuild partnerships, it is now,” added Wachs, who introduced the council motion.

A number of community members--representing neighborhood groups from the Eastside to the San Fernando Valley--turned out at the meeting to urge the council to act.

LAPD officials “seem to think that 232 cellular phones with voice mail will substitute for the loss of the 168 senior lead officers in our neighborhoods,” said Don Shultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. “It won’t. In fact, those of us throughout the city--who experienced the success of the old . . . program--still remain baffled and angry at the stubbornness of the chief as he doggedly insists that his present program is working and will be better than the [senior lead officer] program once the kinks are ironed out.”