Chief Sets LAPD Goals

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton announced a goal Monday of reducing the number of homicides this year by 25% and cutting serious crime overall by 10% from last year.

Since taking over the Los Angeles Police Department six months ago, Bratton has installed new commanders, ordered detectives to work more aggressively, created anti-gang teams and launched a new computer crime tracking system. Now, he said in an interview Monday, he has put the tools and personnel in place that are needed to bring down crime.

“Is there going to be a lot more pressure on everyone? Certainly,” Bratton said, “and that pressure is urgency. We are losing too many lives.”

Bratton’s crime reduction goal comes after Los Angeles ended 2002 with 653 homicides, more than any city in the United States. So far this year, homicides have fallen 25% from the same time last year. Bratton said his goal will be a challenge nonetheless because crime in Los Angeles generally peaks during the summer.

In Los Angeles, the category of serious crime includes homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. Last year, police tallied 111,178 such crimes, up slightly over 2001, according to the state attorney general’s office. Bratton has targeted auto theft, which accounts for about one-third of serious crime in Los Angeles, to help achieve his 10% overall crime reduction goal.

Bratton said he will use crime statistics generated by the Police Department’s new reporting system to more effectively deploy patrol officers and investigators, the same method he used to fight crime in New York City during the 1990s.

Citing policy changes within the department and Bratton’s willingness to listen to rank-and-file officers, Los Angeles police union Vice President Mitzi Grasso said Bratton’s goals are achievable.

“We’ve seen a lot of change. We’re obviously going to see a lot more for the better. The department is being reorganized to reach out to community as a partner,” Grasso said.

Bratton’s remarks came as the City Council is debating next year’s budget, which would increase the department’s budget even as it reduces spending elsewhere.

Mayor James K. Hahn’s spokesman applauded Bratton’s call to reduce the number of homicides. Hahn has pledged to make Los Angeles the nation’s safest big city. The mayor is proposing to hire 320 new officers next year, making the Police Department one of very few city agencies set to grow in 2003-04.

“It’s a terrific goal and we’re doing everything we can to give him the resources we can through the budget process,” Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook said. “We’re giving him the officers and putting the resources out there so that he can achieve that goal.”

In the interview, Bratton stressed urgency, which has become a recurring theme recently for the new chief.

Last week, the chief shook up his command staff. Twelve command officers of the rank of captain and above were promoted and 25 were transferred, including at least two moved to less desirable jobs. The changes affected one-third of Bratton’s total command staff. Bratton described that change, large by traditional Parker Center standards, as a prelude to greater shifts.

The new choices reflected the urgent need to overcome a “we’ll get to it when we get to it attitude” in some quarters, he said.

The Police Department is about to experience Bratton’s signature Compstat crime tracking system, which he used when he was New York’s top cop to hold commanders accountable for crime trends in their areas.

Bratton said Monday that he will begin measuring response time of detectives, who he said too often initiated investigations days after crimes were committed. The lag time has left some victims or key witnesses with clouded memories, or reluctant to talk.

In too many instances since taking office, Bratton said, his deputy chiefs were arriving on the scene of serious crimes ahead of captains and detectives.

“It’s a very ambitious goal to reduce crime that quickly,” said Eric Monkkonen, UCLA professor of history and policy studies. “It is very hard when you don’t have more resources.”

Setting explicit goals is unusual for police departments because crime, especially homicide, is hard to foresee, Monkkonen said. “I am glad to see a leader willing to accept responsibility.”

Bratton said that achieving the goal of reducing crime, including violent crime, by 10% will require focusing “a lot more energy on those large pools of statistics that are generating those large percentage numbers.”

“While we have placed a lot of focus on homicides and shootings, the reality is that if we had a 100% reduction in those two crimes, it would only lead to a 1% reduction in overall crime.”

Aggressively moving to reduce auto thefts could go a long way to reduce the overall crime rate, Bratton said.

Looking back on his first six months in office, the chief said there were no major surprises. But he expressed frustration with what he described as an entrenched and intransigent bureaucracy at City Hall.

In general, homicides in Los Angeles occur in erratic spurts. In recent years, however, the rate has tended to pick up in the summer and fall.

Before 2002, for five years, the number of homicides in the late summer and fall was greater than the number in the first four months of the year by about 40% on average.

Last year, though, a spurt of killings early in the year resulted in a pattern in which the numbers were high in the winter and leveled off later. Department statistics show 231 homicides by the first week of May 2002, and 230 between the end of June and the beginning of November.

So far this year, the number of homicides is lower than in the beginning of 2002, but higher than in the comparable period of 2001.

As of April 19, there had been 148 homicides in Los Angeles, 25% fewer than the 2002 figure for that time period, but higher than the 141 that occurred through April 2001.

During Bratton’s first six months on the job, Nov. 1 through April 25, overall crime in Los Angeles has decreased 5.5%, including a 16% drop in homicides, a 4.6% reduction in rapes, 7.9% fewer aggravated assaults and 6.5% fewer robberies. The number of civilian complaints has also dropped by about a quarter since his arrival.

Bratton, 55, is a former Boston street cop who went on to become one of the best known law enforcement executives in the country as New York police commissioner.

In New York, he returned officers to the beat, ordering them to pay attention to small crimes, which he believes lead to more serious ones. Between 1994 and 1996, Bratton and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took credit for reducing homicides and other major crimes.

Bratton’s success was tied to the department’s crime tracking system. While giving precinct captains more power to make decisions, Bratton used the system to guide police response and assess the performance of his commanders.

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Times staff writers Jill Leovy and Peter Nicholas contributed to this report.