LAPD’s Response Time Gauged

Even as Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn touted quicker police response times in new campaign ads Tuesday, the city’s top administrator warned that officers were taking longer to arrive on less urgent calls.

The report by city Administrative Officer William Fujioka quickly reignited a debate in the mayor’s race about the impact of the current three-day workweek on the Los Angeles Police Department.

Fujioka said the average response time to emergencies was 8.3 minutes before the new work schedule was adopted in 2002, but averaged 10.2 minutes in the two years afterward. However, other policy changes made last April brought that response time down to 6.7 minutes.

He reported that police took more time under the new schedule to respond to calls with a priority lower than emergencies.

City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, a former LAPD chief who is a candidate for mayor, said the report backs up the claim he has made during the last two years: that the compressed work schedule -- under which officers work three 12-hour shifts or four 10-hour shifts a week -- was hurting public safety.

“It’s a major failure, and I would hope the City Council will disband this program and put people back to work,” Parks said.

The mayor supports the flexible work schedule and thinks Fujioka’s report does not reflect the best data available, said Kam Kuwata, a spokesman for the Hahn campaign.

Emergency response times have dropped since the data in the report were collected -- to 6.3 minutes, said Lt. Paul Vernon, an LAPD spokesman.

“It’s clearly incomplete,” Kuwata said of the report. “This [criticism] was clearly something trumped up by a failed police chief: Bernard Parks.”

The report was prepared for the council’s Public Safety Committee; Parks is a member.

The average response time for urgent nonemergency calls -- which included property crimes in progress such as car break-ins, in which no life was in danger, went from 9.5 minutes before the compressed work schedule to 10.5 minutes afterward, according to the report.

Officers respond to calls considered to be routine, such as after-the-fact thefts, in an average of 26.2 minutes, up from 21.2 before the flexible work schedule was put in place.

The overall improvement in response times last year for emergency calls -- those considered most serious -- followed a policy change that allowed LAPD units to use lights and sirens when answering more types of calls.

The report was made public the day that the issue of response times was raised in campaign television ads by the mayor’s reelection campaign. They tout Hahn’s hiring of William J. Bratton as police chief.

“Now violent crime is down 18% and response times are faster,” Hahn states in the commercial.

The report was sent to Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, who said further study was needed to learn the impact on response time from the decrease of field officers, as well as other factors.

Lt. Vernon said the department would examine Fujioka’s findings on nonemergency calls to determine whether they were accurate, but he said it was critical that the most serious calls were getting a swifter response.

“What really matters is that crime is significantly down and response times are down, but also important about the flexible work schedule is that morale is up because of that,” Vernon said.

Parks said the report also casts doubt on LAPD officials’ claim that the new schedule would be “cost neutral.”

Fujioka found that in deployment periods after the flexible work schedule began, court overtime worked by officers went up 14.4%, which was an increase in cost. He said end-of-watch overtime decreased by 12.6%, while the number of sick hours used increased 2.6%.

In addition, the report found there was an increase in the number of formal complaints against officers in eight of the 32 categories for complaints, including drugs, domestic violence, dishonesty, retaliation and racial profiling.

In the report, Fujioka stated that there were a lot of factors that could affect response times besides the switch to a flexible work schedule, and that it was impossible to say whether the schedule was solely responsible.

Still, his report is the most comprehensive look at the LAPD’s performance before and after the new schedule started.