Transfers of Foothill Staff Under Way : Police: None were involved in the Rodney King beating. The move is designed to help restore public confidence in the division, officials say.

More than a dozen Los Angeles police officers, none of them involved in the Rodney King beating, will be transferred from the division where the incident occurred, Assistant Chief Robert Vernon said Tuesday. He said the move is part of an effort to restore public confidence.

Vernon said the officers--including two lieutenants, at least two sergeants, and about 10 patrol officers--were being transferred from the Foothill Division not as punishment but to make room for incoming officers with special skills in community relations.

Most of the transfers, a few of which have already occurred, will be effective a week from Sunday, he said.

Vernon said Assistant Chief Mark A. Kroeker, the San Fernando Valley’s top police official, has been conducting a department-wide search for officers noted for their compassion and communications skills. They will be traded for members of Kroeker’s staff.

The reassignments stem from an order “to re-earn the trust of all the people in the Valley, but, in particular, in the Foothill area,” Vernon said.

“I want to emphasize that the people we are now moving out have no connection with the Rodney King case. Those folks have already been moved,” said Vernon, who declined to disclose the Foothill officers’ names. “The folks being moved out are not being moved for any disciplinary reasons.”

Despite Vernon’s characterization of the transfers, two other police sources said the reassignments were viewed within the embattled Foothill Division--the Northeast Valley patrol area where King was arrested March 3--as a form of housecleaning that often follows scandals and unfairly involves officers with no direct connection to the problem.

The officers being transferred tend to have seniority and have spent a good portion of their careers in that division, the sources said. One said department brass wants “to bring in some new blood, that maybe there’s a stagnation of supervision.”

Another source, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Foothill officers are bracing for more changes and believe that these transfers are just the start.

However, Vernon said no further transfers are planned because of the King case, but added that Foothill may undergo some other personnel changes as part of a department-wide effort to have officers’ race and ethnicity reflect that of the community.

Foothill’s officers now are 21% Latino, a close match to the community’s population, which is between 25% and 30% Latino, Vernon said.

But only 4% of the division’s officers are black, while 20% of the area’s residents are black, Vernon said, “so we have some distance to go there.”

Another 21 LAPD officers, including four who have been indicted in King’s beating and others who were at the scene, have been removed from field duty pending the outcome of investigations. Some have been temporarily transferred to other divisions because one police station cannot accommodate so many officers on desk duty.