Senior Lead Officers Belong in the Field

As a retired L.A. police officer and resident of the city, I follow the articles on LAPD Chief Bernard Parks’ quest for another term.

One issue frequently brought up in discussions about Parks’ effectiveness is the battle over the senior lead officers program and the heat the chief took from the community when he decided to put the SLOs back in the field--a decision that he has since reversed.

I retired in March 2000 after serving 30 proud years with the LAPD. The last 23 years were as a SLO for the Rancho Park community. Parks’ decision to put the SLOs back in the field was a correct one, and he should have stuck to his guns.

When I was a rookie in 1970, I was part of a basic car--a patrol car assigned permanently to a particular neighborhood, which was under the supervision of a SLO. At that time, all nine officers assigned to basic cars attended monthly community meetings. All officers would handle community concerns and problems and contact appropriate agencies to assist where necessary. All officers were familiar with crime and traffic problems in their assigned areas. All officers performed community tasks and worked as a team.

Fast-forward to the late 1990s. The SLOs were no longer working in the field, banished instead to a back room, a trailer or an off-site location. Most SLOs never wore a uniform and were virtually unknown to most of the patrol officers in the station. SLOs became the dumping ground for every complaint, project, concern that no one else wanted to handle. Patrol officers and supervisors would routinely tell citizens to “call your SLO” and drive away, not taking the extra few minutes to give a competent referral or conduct a follow up that would have solved the problem then and there.

Community policing was the “SLOs’ job,” according to most patrol officers and supervisors. The chief saw this was a problem and in response moved the SLOs back into the field. He hoped to return things to the way they had been but instead fell pressure to complaints from an “elite” group of citizens who treated the SLOs as their personal lackeys.

Their response was shortsighted and self-serving. They wanted to ensure that “their” SLO remained available for whatever picayune task they could invent. So, buckling to pressure, Chief Parks removed his most capable and experienced officers from the field.

I must thank the chief for making my last years on the LAPD memorable. I returned to being a top-producing field officer and a peer leader, and I worked with and trained many fine young officers. I enjoyed my job, and routinely I met people who said, “Gee, I spoke to you on the phone a while back. I didn’t know you were an actual police officer.” It felt great to actually be a police officer again.