Officers Walking Beats to Get Neighborhood Back on Its Feet

For the two years that Rosa Gaspar has lived in an apartment on Orion Avenue in Sepulveda, her world has been delineated by the locked iron gate that surrounds her complex.

As much as possible, she stays inside, behind the gate that keeps the drug dealers, prostitutes and transients out. Concerned for the safety of her 10-year-old son, she does not let the boy play outside unless she is there to watch. She doesn’t even let him take out the trash.

But Gaspar believes that things may be changing where she lives in the 8900 block of Orion.

The reason is that Los Angeles police have begun foot patrols for the first time in the Sepulveda neighborhoods south of Nordhoff Street that include Orion, Langdon and Columbus avenues. A 2-week-old pilot program to study the effectiveness of foot beats in the city has placed officers on walking patrols in the area five nights a week.

Gaspar, like many other residents and police officers, believes that the patrols may be a deterrent to drug dealers, prostitutes and other problems in the neighborhood, which is made up mostly of apartment buildings.

‘It Is Changing’

“I’m feeling more and more comfortable with the police here,” Gaspar said. “I think with the police here, it is changing.”

Sgt. George Thomas, who coordinates the foot patrol, said the Police Department is doing what more police agencies across the country are doing: going back to basics.

“The foot beat is a tradition that is at the core of law enforcement,” Thomas said. “When you are in a patrol car, you are cut off from the people. You are on the outside looking in. The foot beat takes away that barrier. It puts police officers in contact with the people they serve.”

Although a handful of drug dealers and several drug buyers and loiterers have been arrested since the officers were put on foot in the area, Thomas said the goal of the program is not more arrests. Police hope that their presence will make drug dealers and prostitutes and their customers go somewhere else. In the meantime, officers hope to improve relations with the community.

“We are not as interested in putting people in jail as we are in letting kids play and ride their bikes, letting people enjoy their neighborhood without being in danger,” Thomas said.

Second Beat Planned

The Sepulveda foot beat--which includes two-block stretches of Orion, Langdon and Columbus between Nordhoff and Rayen streets--is the only such patrol in the San Fernando Valley. Thomas said the department expects to put foot officers on a beat covering the Pierce Park public housing complex in Pacoima early next month.

In Sepulveda, six to eight officers walk the beat between 5 p.m. and midnight Wednesday through Sunday. The officers work in pairs and take to the sidewalks in an area where more than 800 arrests for drugs, prostitution, thefts and gang-related crimes were made in the first six months of the year.

The patrol is one of 18 new foot beats in a pilot program approved by the Los Angeles City Council. The council voted in September to implement the beats as a means of increasing police presence in high-crime neighborhoods. The foot beats do not entail the addition of new officers. Rather, they are being manned by officers working on overtime shifts.

Although originally set for a 10-month tryout, the program was vetoed four days after it started by Mayor Tom Bradley, who said he would support a shorter three-month program. While the issue is being hashed out by the mayor and the council, the Police Department has continued the patrols and expects at least the three-month program to be approved.

Popularity Returns

Experts on foot patrols said cities grappling with neighborhood crime, particularly drug problems, are increasingly turning to foot patrols to fight the problems.

“Departments from Alberta to Tallahassee are doing it,” New York City Police Lt. Thomas Madden said. “It is to get back in touch with their communities.”

Madden is assigned to the Vera Institute of Justice, a police research organization that monitors foot patrols that it helped establish five years ago in New York City’s police precincts.

“The foot patrol is efficient and effective,” Madden said. “It is not just a community relations gimmick. These officers take pro-active roles in the neighborhoods. Having them there improves quality of life conditions. The officers are right there in the neighborhood as a physical representation of the local government.”

5-Year Growth

More than 200 U. S. cities have officers on foot beats, according to the National Neighborhood Foot Patrol Center in East Lansing, Mich.

“Without a doubt, it is clearly the trend in policing today,” said David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice, where the center is located.

“The foot patrol was almost extinct,” Carter said. “During the last five years is when we have seen its growth.

“The contemporary foot patrol goes beyond having a cop walk a beat like we used to have years ago. They are out there to talk to people, get to know them, to establish a liaison between residents and their government.”

The rise in popularity of the foot beat among police departments coincides with the rise of neighborhood problems associated with crack cocaine, Carter said. Crack dealers and users can quickly spread through a neighborhood, turning entire blocks into areas of danger and decay. He said the posting of officers on foot helps re-establish a sense of order in neighborhoods and shows law-abiding citizens that local government cares.

Little Crime Evidence

On the beat on Orion on a recent night, open drug and prostitution problems were not apparent. Graffiti on walls and dumpsters on the street hinted at troubles, but Thomas said the police presence was acting as a deterrent.

Thomas and other officers were greeted warmly as they walked along the sidewalks. They introduced themselves to adults and passed out baseball cards to youngsters. They chased a known hooker out of a parking garage and checked alleys for drug users. On Langdon, a teen-ager was asked how his high school basketball team would do this year. A man known to police as a paroled drug dealer who lives elsewhere was sternly told that he did not belong on the street.

Officer John Girard has worked patrol, narcotics and vice operations around the neighborhood for nine years. But only now is he getting the chance to work the street on foot, to establish contacts with concerned residents. He said he is already nurturing the start of a committee of residents and landlords. The first meeting is scheduled Oct. 26 at a nearby church.

“We are going to try to develop a community strategy for dealing with the problems of the area,” Girard said. “There are a lot of good people here that want to do something.”

Baseball Cards

During the evening patrol, 10-year-old cousins Victor and Henry Funez rode up to Thomas and Girard on their bikes. They hopped off and approached the men in blue uniforms and hats. Victor timidly asked: “Do you have baseball cards?”

“Are you kidding?” Thomas asked back. “Of course I have baseball cards.”

The boys were each presented with cards featuring Orel Hershiser, which promptly brought smiles all around. For Victor, the appearance of the foot patrol officers is something he looks forward to each night--and not just because of the baseball cards.

“I like to see them here,” he said of the officers. “There are too many drug dealers. I want the police to keep them out.”

How long and how well police can do what the boy wants depends on whether the foot patrols are continued by the city’s politicians at the end of the pilot program.

“It’s like cockroaches in the kitchen,” Officer Gene Ferone said one night while on foot patrol on Columbus Avenue. “You hit them with the light and they hit the bricks; they’re gone. You turn the light out and they are going to come back.”

But for now, while the foot patrol is still a presence on Orion, Langdon and Columbus, police said its effect has already been positive.

“The good people are coming out,” Thomas said. “They are feeling safer, and that is the name of the game.”