LAPD Officers, Project Residents Explore Ways to Ease Tensions

After a week and a half of clashes in and around South Los Angeles housing projects that have left seven police officers injured, residents and police got together at a meeting Thursday and agreed on some steps to ease tensions.

Although the meeting at the Jordan Downs gymnasium was heated at times, police, residents and politicians agreed to increased foot patrols, to hold monthly meetings and to try to bring back federal funding for a once-popular community policing program.

Tensions have resulted in violence five times recently at the Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Court housing projects, usually as police tried to make a stop or an arrest, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Patrick M. Gannon.

Crowds have quickly formed each time, with the suspects sometimes becoming the objects of a kind of tug-of-war, he said.

The latest incident occurred Wednesday after a drive-by shooting that left two people in critical condition. Firefighters and then police were pelted with objects, but no one was hurt.

However, on Tuesday night, two police officers were kicked, beaten and bitten by about a dozen people after they tried to arrest a parolee at Nickerson Gardens, Gannon said.

Sunday night, a foot chase at Imperial Court took an even more dangerous turn when an 11-year-old girl became “so incensed she picked up a broomstick to strike officers. Her grandmother took it away and [the girl] picked up a butcher knife,” Gannon said.

“If not for the actions of the grandmother, a tragedy could have occurred,” he said.

Last Friday, three police officers at Jordan Downs were injured by a crowd after they made a traffic stop of a bicyclist, Lt. Rick Angelos said. The officers, who suffered cuts and scratches, returned to work Tuesday.

“If there’s a guy running through the development carrying a gun or carrying drugs, that’s a legitimate chase. But there’s a belief that every time we do that, it’s wrong,” Gannon told about 100 people assembled at the Jordan Downs Recreation Center.

The meeting was attended by Chief Bernard C. Parks, Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, Councilwoman Janice Hahn and other local leaders.

Parks urged residents not to get caught up in perceived past slights and to think instead about solving problems.

“To provide good service, there needs to be a level of trust on both sides,” Parks said. “We cannot be successful without your help.”

Some residents complained that police officers should treat them with more respect.

Dorothy Toliver, 65, a longtime Jordan Downs resident, said that years ago, police officers “walked the beat.”

“Now, when they come around, they come like you just done stole the world,” she said. “They need to try to get to know people in the community.”

Resident Richard Alford, 30, said too many officers “have no people skills. They act like we’re all suspects, and we’re not.”

Other residents expressed a common fear that affects their relationship with police: retaliation by suspects if they report crimes. The Southeast Division consistently has the highest murder rate in the city, police say.

Gannon said that as of Wednesday night, his division had increased the number of police officers on foot patrol at the three housing developments. That will continue from now on, he said.

Millender-McDonald said she would take a petition signed by residents to Washington to ask the federal government for funding to bring back the Community Oriented Policing on the Streets--or COPS--program.