Volunteer Spies Are Secret Weapon in LAPD’s Arsenal

The crackling over the walkie-talkie set the strip-mall commandos in motion, worming their way across a Northridge rooftop to spy on the wrongdoer below.

It had been a long, shivery night on the roof of Circuit City. No drug dealers, no gang bangers, no junior high graffiti artists to watch in the shopping center parking lot.

The four volunteers, members of the LAPD Devonshire Division’s Volunteer Surveillance Team, had settled for sharing coffee cake out of a Baggie and talking about grandkids. Suburban crime, up until this moment, had seemed like an oxymoron.

But now there was a report of suspicious activity in a red Honda in the alley. And as the four graying spies clung to the edge of the roof, peering and ceaselessly whispering into their walkie-talkies, they acted as if they were witnessing the storming of Ft. Knox.

“There’s this rush you get when a crime is going down right in front of you and you’re watching it and the guy’s got no idea you’re out there and the cops are seconds away,” says OP-1, a 66-year-old woman who wears an itchy black ski mask. She and the other volunteers dress in dark clothing and call each other “OP,” shorthand police lingo for observation post.

In this case, the suspicious activity turned out to be a 20-year-old man smoking a joint. No matter. This was Northridge, after all. And when the cops stepped out of their squad car to make the arrest, chests puffed out, one of the OPs pumped his fist in the air.

“Way to go OP-3!” a cop shouted over the radio. “You spotted him, man. Good police work.”

Intrepid Teams Go the Extra Mile

The surveillance team, the first of several in the city, has been spying for the Devonshire Division of the Los Angeles Police Department for the past eight years. They’ve huddled in cardboard boxes in the rain, waited in cars, worn wigs, scaled walls, peeked through holes in newspapers and helped police make 200-plus arrests this year from truancy to burglary.

The volunteers work in tandem with uniformed police officers on surveillance details by discreetly observing high-crime areas and calling for information to squad cars positioned a few blocks away, but they don’t make arrests themselves.

Their success has spawned similar programs elsewhere, including the LAPD’s Harbor and West L.A. divisions.

Many of the 55 members are retired and have time for late-night details, including an 83-year-old former Navy captain.

“It’s better than fishing,” said 58-year-old OP-6, who, like the other members of the Devonshire squad, didn’t want to give his real name for fear of retribution. “We catch something every night.”

The mastermind of the group is 28-year-old LAPD Officer Don Graham, a boyish patrolman who wears Hawaiian shirts and faded jeans and glows with an enthusiasm that’s hard to suppress.

Calling himself a nerd with a gun, he gets volunteers pumped up before each detail by holding a roll call in the real squad room and saying things like “Let’s be careful out there,” before dispatching the squad.

Graham says the volunteers, who usually pull three four-hour details per week, have saved the department millions of dollars.

“We wouldn’t be able to gather intelligence like this if we had to staff these details with paid officers,” he said.

But Carol Watson, a board member of Police Watch, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that scrutinizes police conduct, worries that the volunteers put themselves at risk and create unnecessary liability for the city.

Plus, “The idea of turning society into one where ordinary people are spying on each other is not a healthy social climate,” she said.

Counters Joe Eddy, a Devonshire Division lieutenant: “If you want to get esoteric about it, this is what community policing is all about--residents watching over their neighborhoods.”

Eddy also pointed out that, after eight years and hundreds of details, no volunteer has ever been hurt or overstepped the bounds of being an observer, such as trying to make an arrest.

Truants Are a Favorite Target

On a recent morning detail, the volunteers were itching for their next mission: busting truants, prized quarry that’s easy to catch.

“You guys know the drill,” Graham said in the roll call room. “Let’s get out there and teach those little punks some respect.”

With those words fortifying their already unswerving sense of mission, the volunteers filed out of the police station, into their cars and drove to positions around James Monroe High School in North Hills.

OP-1 was waiting in her dented Chrysler, its seats swathed in dog hair, her head covered in a very unconvincing nappy gray wig.

“You never know if somebody is going to recognize you from an earlier detail and blow your cover,” she said.

Four other OP’s were also in cars on side streets near the high school, eyes peeled for kids leaving school. OP-5 had the toughest assignment, parked across from a high fence known to be a popular escape route.

Los Angeles city ordinance No. 45.04 says it’s a misdemeanor to be on the streets when you’re supposed to be in school, even if it’s just a matter of being 10 minutes late.

Ten officers in several squad cars were positioned around the school but not too close to give the operation away. A mini-jail, consisting of a few officers, a table for booking, and a couple of dozen folding chairs, was set up in a parking lot a few blocks away from the school.

“We got a male juvenile with flaming red hair walking north on Haskell,” one OP called over the radio. A minute later a squad car zoomed by, a shock of red hair visible in the back seat.

“We got a female juvie dressed in all black . . . “ another call went out.

Within hours, police had turned the parking lot holding area into a pen of misery. Kids with their hair still wet sat on metal folding chairs rubbing their wrists where the handcuffs had dug in, waiting for a citation.

Big, macho-looking boys cried. Many girls, too, with gray mascara tears splashing down their cheeks.

At times like this, Graham and other officers turned down the banter and tried to cheer up the dejected.

“The reason why we arrest you is because we don’t want to see you fail,” said one officer nicknamed “Hooch.”

Anonymity Is Protected

Meanwhile, in the parked cars, the volunteers continued to work the radios.

They called in every kid they saw on the streets.

OP-1 sat on the passenger side of her Chrysler, pretending she was waiting for someone.

For a housewife and a grandmother who had never set foot in a police station until she signed up for the volunteer squad at its inception, OP-1 has seen a lot of action. She’s helped bust taggers, drug dealers, cat burglars and once a serial rapist wanted for assaulting women in a Valley park.

“It felt pretty good to put that one away,” she said.

Sitting on her dog-hair seats, OP-1 unfolded a newspaper with a little hole in it and held it in front of her face, with her eye peering through the hole. All she needed now was some hapless kid eager for a few hours of daytime liberty to step into view.

“The best part is the kids think the school police just happened to catch them by chance,” she said. “They have no idea that we even exist.”