Parks’ Community Policing Changes Drawing Criticism

A growing number of neighborhood activists and other police supporters are expressing displeasure with a recent decision by Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to shift officers who have been in charge of community policing efforts back into patrol cars.

While Parks says he is reorganizing the LAPD to put more officers on the streets in an attempt to invigorate community-based policing, many residents fear the new chief is dismantling a policing model that has proved successful in recent years.

Parks, putting a personal stamp on the LAPD’s community policing efforts since taking office in August, has shifted about 160 “senior lead officers” back into patrol work. Before the reorganization, those employees were primarily responsible for working as liaisons between the public and the department, addressing neighborhood crime and “quality of life” issues.

Senior lead officers, who attended Neighborhood Watch and other community meetings, will now work in the field and train junior officers on community policing techniques. In addition, they will be asked to maintain their community contacts and attend meetings when they can.

Parks has designated patrol sergeants to take over some of the duties of the senior lead officers--in addition to their other duties. Each sergeant will be responsible for a territory that has been handled by two senior lead officers.

Some residents say the result will be less local input on crime issues and fewer contacts with the department officers.

“It is important that we not go back to what we had 15 years ago--cops on one side and an uninformed community on the other,” Page Miller, a Neighborhood Watch member in North Hollywood, wrote in a letter to Parks. “Your logic fails to make sense. Before you destroy something good that many people have tried to build up, perhaps you should educate yourself a little more.”

Kathryn Rowley, a Silver Lake resident who sits on her local Community Police Advisory Board, said she thinks the chief is “taking a step backward in community-based policing.”

“With the senior leads, the community for the first time has somebody they felt they could call who would respond to their concerns,” Rowley said.

Parks and his top officers have defended the changes, saying community policing needs to be embraced by every officer in the department and not be just the sole responsibility of senior lead officers. Parks said he is trying to improve community policing, not tear it down.

“We need to take it to the next level,” he has said in recent public appearances.

Parks also contends that the sergeants--whose rank gives them greater influence within the department and city government--will be better suited to be liaisons with the community, despite having larger territories to look after.

Lt. Jim McDonnell, who oversees the LAPD’s community policing efforts, said he has received a number of calls from the public expressing concern about the issue. But he said much of the angst is simply “fear of the unknown.”

“They don’t have a lot of information about what is going to happen, so they’re filling in the gaps themselves, and they’re afraid of what might happen,” he said.

McDonnell said that under Parks’ plan, all officers will have the responsibility of being “problem solvers” for the community, instead of running from call to call and leaving scenes without getting to the root of the problem. Patrol officers will shoulder the responsibility of community policing and will no longer be allowed to hand off community concerns and requests to the senior lead officers.

Additionally, McDonnell said the department is changing the way it evaluates officers; they will be judged on how they interact with the community in addition to numbers of arrests and other measures of productivity.

For Parks’ vision to take hold, many officers are going to have to get over their belief that community policing is a New Age, touchy-feely philosophy and not real police work, LAPD officials say.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” McDonnell acknowledged.

Parks has also said that in addition to community policing, which began taking hold in the last five years under former Chief Willie L. Williams, the city should move toward “community-based government” that will respond to problems with graffiti, sanitation, street lighting and public health.

“We have a limit as to what we can do [as a police department]. If we don’t watch it, we’ll become everything to everybody, which we have no ability to deal with,” Parks said in an interview before he was appointed as chief.

Despite her concerns, Pam Brown--a Neighborhood Watch member in Westchester--said she is “willing to stop my letters of protest and see if [Parks’ plan] works.”

Although she likes having a senior lead officer she can work with directly, she is hopeful that the community policing philosophy can be adopted by all LAPD officers.

“We’ll see if that happens,” she said.

Because of their close contacts with residents, some senior lead officers have developed strong support and goodwill in their communities. Some top department officials have accused several senior lead officers of pressuring their community contacts to complain about Parks’ reorganization because they don’t want to go back to patrol.

“Some of these guys had cushy jobs,” said one top LAPD staffer. “They’re afraid they now may have to work for a living.”

Community leaders countered that Parks has pressured senior lead officers to get on board with his plan and not to criticize the changes publicly. Some of these officers said they feared retribution if they commented on the changes.

“My mother didn’t raise a fool,” said one.

Some neighborhood activists have started letter-writing campaigns to the chief, Mayor Richard Riordan, City Council members and police commissioners. But among the city’s political leadership, there seems to be tremendous support for letting the new chief run the department the way he sees fit, at least for now.

“The mayor supports Chief Parks’ reorganization, and this is part of the reorganization,” said Noelia Rodriguez, Riordan’s press secretary. “Let’s see how this plays out and see how effective it is before people doom it as a failure.”

Police Commission member Gerald Chaleff agreed, saying, “You have to give it a chance. . . . Chief Parks is committed to community-based policing.”

But others are less willing to buy into Parks’ plan.

Dave Hepburn, president of the police union, said that he believes the changes will negatively affect the community and that LAPD representation at meetings and personal contacts with residents are bound to “fall by the wayside.”

He said Parks has not sought input from officers about the plan.

“He seems to think he knows best,” Hepburn said. “He doesn’t take their views and opinions into consideration. . . . That’s his management style. It’s very difficult to get him to sit down and listen to people in the organization.”