PARKS ASKS SUPPORT FOR OVERHAUL.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

Saying police and residents need to work smarter and not necessarily harder, Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks urged community leaders Saturday to get behind a hotly debated overhaul of the police department's community policing program.

Parks asked citizen activists from the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere in the city to get behind his plan to move 170 senior lead officers back to patrol jobs, for instance - because it will lead to more officers becoming involved in community policing, he said.

Some Valley Neighborhood Watch leaders have signed petitions encouraging Parks to abandon the planned change, saying they will lose their key contacts in the Police Department.

But during the LAPD's fourth annual summit on community-based policing, Parks said the changes will make the department more responsive to the various communities in America's second-largest city.

``All of (the changes) should be viewed for the greater good,'' Parks said in his keynote address to a crowd of more than 800 community leaders and law enforcement officials gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

``They are intended to enhance our operations in the community,'' Parks said.

Top LAPD brass argue that the community policing program has failed to broaden its scope because involvement has been limited to the senior lead officers, who are now full-time police liaisons to the public.

The reorganization calls for making sergeants in the LAPD's 18 divisions available as liaisons to the community along with the senior lead officers. The move will serve to make all the officers who report to the sergeants, and not just the senior lead officers, experts in community-based policing, officials said.

Despite the petitions objecting to the change, many of the citizen advisers to each of the divisions said Saturday they favored giving the new plan a try.

``We will be able to talk to any police officers about our problems in the community,'' said Linda Underwood, an Encino resident and member of the West Valley's Community Police Advisory Board. ``We don't have to save it up for the senior lead officer. I know it will be a rough transition. But I have high hopes for it.''

For many Angelenos, the senior lead officer in their community is akin to the beat officer of yesteryear, the cop who knew residents on a first-name basis, was a familiar sight in neighborhoods and was always on hand to deal with problems.

Under the new plan, the senior lead officer will retain that role. But sergeants for the first time will also be responsible for geographic areas - a move police officials said will make officers reporting to the sergeants more involved in the areas they patrol.

``It means community policing becomes everybody's job rather than having a single point of contact for a community,'' said Capt. Jim McDonnell, who directed the community policing program before a recent promotion.

McDonnell said there has been a tendency among officers to refer calls other than routine crime calls to the senior lead officers, which means many officers only have contact with the communities they serve when they respond to a crime.

The new plan strives to make all officers more involved in solving community problems and to make senior lead officers, who work out of community relations offices at each station, spend more time out in the field.

``There was a perception problem, and this is an attempt to bridge that perception problem,'' McDonnell said.

As part of the LAPD's plan to work smarter, Parks also said the department is looking for ways to get business and local government more involved in community policing efforts.

``I think we have to give it an opportunity to work,'' said Mark Markowitz, a member of the West Valley Community Police Advisory Board.

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PHOTO Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks extends a hand to participants in the summit on community-based policing Saturday.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News