Backlogs Are a Sign of Success for L.A. Neighborhood Prosecutors

Stacey Anthony’s small cubicle, wedged in the middle of a cramped room in the Southwest Police Station, is crowded with reminders of the problems she has yet to solve.

More than a dozen manila folders list the local complaints that Anthony, one of the city’s 18 neighborhood prosecutors, is trying to tackle: prostitution, black-market pharmaceuticals, illegal dumping. A large blue binder stuffed with paper contains scores of community concerns she hasn’t even been able to consider.

“I have a huge backlog,” Anthony said with a rueful smile.

One year after the inception of the neighborhood prosecutor program, which placed a deputy city attorney in every police division to address quality-of-life crimes, Anthony and her fellow prosecutors are deluged with requests for assistance.

City officials, police and residents have praised the $3.6-million program for providing a new tool to take on some of the city’s most intractable nuisance issues. In the process, it has won over some skeptics who initially saw the effort as expensive and unnecessary.

“I was one who said, ‘OK, I’m going to approve this, but in a year, I want success stories and I want to know that it’s really made a difference,’ ” said Councilwoman Janice Hahn. “And from my perspective, it certainly has made a difference.”

City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo now wants $2.6 million more next year to double the number of neighborhood prosecutors, who are charged with stopping misdemeanor crimes before more serious problems take hold in a neighborhood.

“In the first year, we had greater success than we dared imagine,” Delgadillo said. “But consequently, we have become the victim of our own success.”

Doubling the program’s size, despite its popularity, will not be easy. For the second year in a row, the city is coping with strapped finances, and officials say that there will be room for few if any additional expenses next year.

“We’re focusing on a very lean budget,” said Mayor James K. Hahn.

Councilwoman Hahn was even more blunt.

“He’d better not be asking for more money,” she said of Delgadillo. “I think he’s going to have to do with what he has now.”

The city attorney said the program saves the city money in the long run by increasing property values and luring more businesses to areas free of graffiti and other nuisance crimes. Tackling long-standing community problems eventually reduces the demands on law enforcement, he added.

“People understand that this is a wise investment that will give us dividends both in revenue and goodwill in the community,” Delgadillo said. He remains hopeful that a majority of council members will back his request for additional funding.

In the last year, the 18 neighborhood prosecutors identified 854 local problems and resolved about 40% of them, according to the city attorney’s office. The team prosecuted 484 criminal cases, with a 94% conviction rate.

Mayor Hahn, who started a similar program during his tenure as city attorney that deals with nuisance properties, said he supports the concept of the new effort, but said the neighborhood prosecutors should be resolving more cases.

“Given the resources they have over there, we’d like to see a higher level of productivity,” Hahn said.

Delgadillo defended the team’s success rate, saying the prosecutors have discovered problems that the city government was not even aware of.

“I think we solved the ones that are solvable in the first year,” he said.

In the Fairfax district, where a transient was harassing business owners and vandalizing property, the neighborhood prosecutor succeeded in obtaining a court order keeping the man away from the street.

In Sun Valley, officials prosecuted six people for illegal street racing and installed speed bumps and created tow-away zones.

In San Pedro, the prosecutor and police worked together to clean up a park that had been taken over by drug users and transients.

Police officials said having a neighborhood prosecutor working out of each division has helped reinforce the efforts of senior lead officers, who often spot brewing community problems.

“It has given us more tools, more contacts and more ability,” said Capt. Mike Downing of the Police Department’s Hollywood Division.

Councilwoman Jan Perry said the program has provided her staff with legal partners to remedy constituent concerns. In her downtown district, the neighborhood prosecutor stopped rave parties being held at a local warehouse and helped establish a police task force to crack down on illegal food vendor carts.

“It’s a really good, holistic way of problem-solving,” Perry said.

In Crenshaw, Anthony said, one of her biggest victories was shutting down a recycling center that had been frequented by transients and drug dealers. For years, neighbors had complained that they felt intimidated to walk past the site. Anthony was able to convince city officials that the center had been granted a permit erroneously.

“We feel a big relief, because we finally found a way that we could see some results,” said Ignacio Luquin, a factory worker who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years. “The whole problem is just completely gone.”

Soon after the recycling center was closed, the property owner tried to rent the site to a roofing company, a violation of local zoning laws. The neighbors contacted building inspectors to prevent the move.

“The most important part of it for me,” Anthony said, “was that the community was empowered to say, ‘We can make a difference; we can make a change.’ ”