HOW MANY COPS WORK THE VALLEY? LEADERS DEMAND ACCOUNTING AS RESPONSE TIME INCREASES.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA

Staff Writer

Some of the San Fernando Valley's top political leaders are demanding that the LAPD give a full accounting of officer deployment in the region as gang crime escalates and response times lag.

Five of the six Los Angeles City Council members who represent the Valley are pushing the department to provide specific data on how many officers are patrolling the Valley daily, with some saying they are frustrated by the LAPD's "creative staffing methods."

They accuse the department of pulling patrol officers from the streets and placing them in special details or other parts of the city, putting Valley residents' safety at risk.

"They are playing games with this stuff," Councilman Greig Smith said, noting that the Los Angeles Police Department has more officers than it has ever had, yet "we are having trouble with patrol."

LAPD officials defend the strategy, saying they're shifting resources to where they need them the most, a hallmark of Chief William Bratton's approach to tackling crime.

Recently, though, city officials have said Bratton's push to create special task forces and bolster the anti-terrorism unit have compromised patrol.

In June, it took Valley police officers an average of 7.8 minutes to respond to an emergency call. That's 1 minute more than the citywide average of 6.7 minutes.

And in the Devonshire Division, which covers Northridge, Granada Hills, Porter Ranch, Winnetka, West Hills and Canoga Park, it took officers an average of 9.8 minutes to respond to emergency calls in June.

The division is also home to the Canoga Park Alabamas, a gang Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared in February one of the city's most dangerous.

"It takes 10 minutes for an officer to get to an emergency call. That is absolutely absurd," said Councilman Dennis Zine, an ex-cop who, with Smith, co-introduced a motion for the department to come up with the deployment figures in one month.

"By the time they come, the rapist, the murderer, the robber commits the crime," said Zine, who believes the slow response is a direct result of too few patrol officers.

More officers added

The Valley's top cop, Deputy Chief Michel Moore, said four patrol officers -- or two cars -- were added in the Devonshire Division to reduce the 9.8-minute response time. Two officers had been assigned to a special anti-prostitution team and another two were put on foot patrol in the Northridge Fashion Center, where more theft calls come in than anywhere else in the Valley.

"Whenever we assign personnel, if we move them from one area to another area, we are not doing so because we are moving them from an area of excess," Moore said. "We are constantly adjusting the input, the output and moving people around because the nature of the problem changes."

The real problem is a force stretched too thin, Moore added. A surge in hiring has pushed LAPD officer levels to an all-time high of 9,500. With 1,800 of those officers, the Valley has more cops than any other LAPD bureaus.

The department's patrol plan, which is based on more than 20 factors, including crime, the number of radio calls and an area's size, calls for 127 patrol cars on Valley streets daily. But only about 110 patrol cars are actually deployed on any given day. Some of those patrol officers, including 12 traffic police, were pulled away for a 50-person violent-crime task force created in February by Bratton and Villaraigosa to battle the gang violence in the Valley, which skyrocketed 44 percent last year. Since January, gang crime in the Valley has grown 15 percent.

Drop in violent crime

As far as deployment, it's unclear how the Valley Bureau measures up to other parts of the city because the LAPD did not provide figures.

But Moore said despite last year's rise in gang crime, it's important to look at the larger picture, including a 20 percent drop in violent crime over the past four years in the Valley.

Smith contends that basic patrol service should not be dictated by crime statistics, but rather by a commitment to every resident.

During a ride-along in June, he said, he witnessed one Valley division struggle with only two patrol cars while the downtown division had 22.

"They had so many cars, they were falling over each other," he said.

Councilman Tony Cardenas, who heads the council's ad hoc committee on gang violence and youth development, was among the five who signed the motion.

"We need to make sure the Valley is being taken care of and getting its fair share," he said in a statement.

"With the surge in gang crimes in our area, we have a responsibility to make sure we are being efficient in our deployment of law enforcement and thorough in our oversight of public safety."

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

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