COMMUNITY POLICING IMPROVING IN L.A.

Byline: Bernard C. Parks 

THE mission of the Los Angeles Police Department is to enhance public safety by reducing the fear and incidence of crime, maintaining public order and facilitating the safe and expeditious movement of traffic.

The primary service delivery vehicles used to accomplish this mission are the 18 community police stations. The uniformed men and women who work on patrol, responding to calls for service and engaged in problem-solving activities to reduce crime and improve the quality of life for the communities within the city of Los Angeles, comprise the bulk of our day-to-day presence in those communities.

Senior lead officers have always been an integral part of that system and will continue to be in the future.

In the early 1990s, the department was faced with rising crime rates and a tremendous call load that did not adequately provide our uniformed patrol officers sufficient time to engage in problem-solving activities or develop meaningful relationships with the public they served.

To develop those informal relationships and better coordinate our response to community concerns, the department moved the senior lead officers from the Basic Car deployment. The move was never meant to be permanent and, in fact, the senior lead officers were still expected to coordinate their problem-solving activities with the other members of their Basic Car.

Over the course of the next several years, the senior lead officers, for the most part, proved effective in establishing increased community liaison and engaging in problem-solving activities. However, what was lost was the day-to-day communication with other members of the Basic Car, as well as the insight and wisdom each senior lead officer possessed in providing guidance to new police officers fresh out of the academy and learning this profession dedicated to public service.

Since that time, the city leaders have made significant budgetary commitments to increase the size of the department by more than 2,000 officers. With sufficient resources now in place to achieve these goals, it is appropriate to bring the senior lead officers back to the Basic Car deployment and ask each one to provide leadership within their Basic Car, in problem-solving and maintaining effective partnerships with the communities they serve.

It is not acceptable that 168 senior lead officers are the sole focus of supporting the tenets of community policing. The strategy of returning these officers to the Basic Car is but one part of the department's strategic initiatives to institutionalize community policing and provide a greater level of service to the people of Los Angeles.

The Daily News can be certain that community policing has improved since the senior lead officers' return to the Basic Car deployment. Incidents of crime continue to drop. The number of arrests has more than doubled since 1996, while the use-of-force incidents have gone down since 1994. Officer-involved-shootings have decreased by 42 percent since 1990. Vehicle pursuits have also declined by 41 percent, from 907 in 1993 to 534 in 1998.

The department's commitment to the community is also evident in its hiring process and in ensuring fair representation from the diverse community it serves. Fifty-three percent of our police officers are people of color; female officers have increased from 215 in 1980 to 1,734 in 1998. The LAPD leads all California police departments in hiring sworn female officers. In addition, an outreach program, which holds open community forums with the chief of police, has also been created to allow all sectors of the community to air their concerns and establish meaningful discussions with department representatives.

The forums include the black community, Hispanic community, Asian/Pacific Islander community, gay and lesbian, religious and youth communities. Community links such as the Neighborhood Watch programs also continue.

In response to the ever-changing needs of the community, the Basic Car is evolving toward serving the community better and institutionalizing community policing. Each officer is now primed to take ownership of the community he or she serves. It is my sincere hope that the community welcomes the changes and embraces the advances the LAPD is making with community policing.