Alarm Policy’s Effect Unclear

When the Los Angeles Police Department stops responding to unverified burglar alarms in mid-April, some city officials are hoping the new policy will also trigger a significant realignment of where police officers are assigned throughout Los Angeles, freeing more patrols to cope with violent crime in central and southern neighborhoods.

But LAPD officials are playing down the potential effects of the policy on deployment, cautioning that redistribution will be minimal because of the complicated formula used to place patrols throughout the city.

Instead, police citywide may simply be able to get to other calls faster and have more time for preventive policing -- especially in wealthier communities that have had the bulk of false alarms.

The deployment formula includes the numbers of calls for service in different areas, so removing last year’s 112,000 false burglar alarm calls from the equation could alter where patrols are assigned. More than 60% of the city’s false-alarm calls come from West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, while most of the violent crime is centered in South Los Angeles and the city’s core.

That has led some council members to conclude that their districts could get more officers, once the burden of responding to so many alarm calls is lifted.

“You would hope that the presence would increase” in high-crime areas, said Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents the densely populated neighborhoods west and north of downtown.

In fact, making police more available to combat gang crime and other violence was the main argument Chief William J. Bratton used to persuade the City Council to support a different approach to burglar alarm calls. The new policy is an attempt to cope with the staggering number of alarm calls, the majority of them false, that consume 15% of police patrol time. Confining responses to alarms verified by homeowners or security companies will give the Police Department more time to deal with other crime, the chief told city officials.

But whether that will prompt a shift in officers from low-crime areas to poorer, more violent neighborhoods remains unclear.

“It’s impossible to gauge” whether the change will result in moving officers, said Cmdr. Dan Koenig of LAPD’s governmental relations section. That’s because there are 24 other factors, in addition to the number of service calls, that go into the deployment formula. And even if there is some change, he said, “I don’t think it is going to be as dramatic as the raw numbers of calls would indicate.”

The uncertainty about the exact effect of the new alarm response points up the overwhelming policing needs in a city short hundreds of police officers and a lack of clarity among city officials about how the change will benefit public safety.

City Councilman Jack Weiss said in an interview that he backed the new policy because he believes it will provide more manpower to cope with the high homicide rate in poorer communities.

“Just look at the statistics showing where the dead bodies are piling up in this city,” said Weiss, who represents portions of the Valley and the Westside. The new alarm response will “increase police presence in those parts of town that have fewer alarms and more crime,” he said.

But Councilman Nick Pacheco, whose Eastside district has struggled with a rash of gang killings in the past year, said he had not received an indication that the alarm policy will mean additional patrols for the 14th District.

“No one ever presented it to me as if I was going to get more” officers, said Pacheco, who voted to veto the policy. “If someone said there’s going to be a direct cause and effect, an extra car available because of this, I would have had a different analysis.”

Several council members who supported the policy said they had been swayed by documents and maps the Police Commission released last month, showing that the neighborhoods with the most alarm calls have the fewest violent crimes, while the areas with the fewest alarms have the most violent crimes.

Hands Tied

For example, the West Los Angeles area had 1,141 alarm calls in December, but just 48 violent crimes. Meanwhile, the Rampart area had just 403 alarm calls and 245 violent crimes.

The current alarm policy “really tied the hands of the Police Department and their ability to deploy strategically,” said City Council President Alex Padilla, who voted for the new guideline. “What was by far the most convincing argument for me was the effect on deployment and the use of resources.”

Police statistics demonstrate that the new burglar alarm order will have a much greater effect on the workload of police officers in the Valley and West Los Angeles than on that of officers in the south and central regions of the city.

Almost one-fifth of all calls for service in the San Fernando Valley and 16% of calls in West Los Angeles were for false alarms. Meantime, false burglar alarms made up just 9% and 11% of all police calls for services last year in South and Central Los Angeles -- two areas that are coping with an increase in homicides and other violent crime.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heads the council’s Public Safety Committee, said the Police Department should consider using patrol resources freed by the new alarm policy to deploy more officers to neighborhoods with the most violent crime.

“We’ve got to put more people in immediate reaction to where crimes are occurring,” she said.

But the mathematical formula for deployment of LAPD officers is a set of algorithms so complex that even some LAPD brass confess they don’t know exactly how it works. The formula dates from the late 1980s and was approved by the City Council in response to concerns about the fairness of police deployment.

Other Factors

Issues such as the pattern of when calls occur or the distance police have to travel to respond to calls may weigh more heavily in determining deployment, said Lt. Joseph Hiltner, who helps coordinate the deployment of the force’s 9,100 officers.

“We don’t know exactly what effect” the policy will have, Hiltner said.

In addition, low-crime areas of the city are already served by the minimum number of officers necessary to fill basic functions, according to Koenig. There simply may not be enough officers to skim some off and send them to higher-crime areas, he said, no matter what the change in calls for service.

So while relieving officers from time-consuming false-alarm calls may suggest that more could be used to combat violent crimes, the reality may work out differently, Koenig said.

Instead, the new alarm policy may have its greatest effect on trimming emergency response times, a pressing issue for the department.

With 9,104 officers, the LAPD is near its historic height, but it remains almost 1,000 officers short of its budgeted total. Emergency response times have soared to a median of 10.1 minutes citywide, up from 9.2 minutes at the end of 2001, a direct result of scarce patrol resources, officials say.

In many divisions, such as the Wilshire area, one of LAPD’s busiest stations, patrol officers are frequently reduced to “chasing the radio” -- zipping from call to call and trying to stay ahead of the clock. They have virtually no time for so-called “problem-solving” policing or simple visible patrols.

Still, Reyes and other council members are counting on the new alarm policy to do more than just speed up response times.

“I would hope we could start recognizing where the need is,” he said.