Police Fear, Need Shape Pico-Aliso

Sometimes, Lupe Loera of the Pico-Aliso housing projects in Boyle Heights thinks of the Los Angeles police officers in her neighborhood as soldiers of a hostile foreign army who harass good citizens and commit untold acts of brutality.

And then, on other days, she wonders why there aren’t more officers and patrol cars around to protect defenseless residents from violent drug dealers and the 12 street gangs that prowl the projects.

“We are not against the police,” said Loera, a 51-year-old community activist and mother of eight. “We think it’s right that they come and do their work and take away those people doing bad and selling drugs. But we don’t want them to beat our children and call us dirty names.”

Loera’s ambivalence about the Police Department reflects the attitudes of many Latino residents of Los Angeles in the wake of the beating of Rodney G. King.

The incident has renewed debate in the Latino community about police brutality, prompting more than a dozen Latino community groups--including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the United Neighborhoods Organization--to call for the resignation of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

The groups contend that the King beating is part of a pattern of abuse--similar to incidents described by Loera and other residents of the housing projects--where police officers single out Latinos, blacks and other minorities for harassment.

Indeed, allegations of police brutality led the Pico-Aliso residents to form civilian patrols to monitor police activities a month before the King beating.

And a recent Los Angeles Times Poll shows that 61% of all Latinos in the city of Los Angeles side with Mayor Tom Bradley in his dispute with Gates. Bradley also has called on Gates to leave his post.

Still, no Latino elected officials have joined the dump-Gates movement. Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, the city’s highest-ranking public official and head of the council committee that oversees the Police Department, has taken a cautious stance, saying he will wait until the completion of the Christopher Commission’s investigation of the department.

“There is an independent investigation going on as it relates to the internal operation of the department that I think should go forward,” Alatorre said recently. “If, in fact, at the end of it, there are questions about the administration, then I think appropriate action could take place. A continuation of the rhetoric doesn’t serve the people of Los Angeles well.”

Gloria Molina, a former city councilwoman recently elected to the County Board of Supervisors, has taken a similar stance.

“Whenever she needed Daryl Gates to be there in her councilmanic district, he was always there,” said Robert Alaniz, a spokesman for Molina. “On the other hand, she would be the first to admit that he has made some dumb comments.”

Alaniz said that Molina believes “the problem (in the department) goes much deeper than Daryl Gates.”

Activists like Antonio Rodriguez, an attorney with the East Los Angeles Police Abuse Complaint Center, said they are disappointed that Alatorre, Molina and other Latino politicians have not taken a tougher stand on the issue.

“I think we’re involved in a struggle to determine whether or not there should be police control over civilians or civilian control over the police,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a question of whether or not we live in a police state.”

Rodriguez said he believes Latino politicians like Alatorre and Molina fear losing the police union endorsements they need to win elections in their crime-ridden communities.

“Latino politicians use police endorsements as part of their calling cards,” Rodriguez said. “They understand there is a tremendous ambivalence (in the Latino community) about law enforcement. We want to be protected.”

One prominent Latino figure is calling for Bradley, rather than Gates, to resign in the wake of the King affair. Julian Nava, former member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, is supporting a recall drive against the Mayor. Nava said Bradley has used “underhanded” tactics to remove the chief from office.

“Overall, Chief Gates has done a good job,” Nava said. “I think the gentleman (Gates) deserves due process.”

Those calling for Gates’ resignation point to a number of recent incidents as evidence of serious problems in the department: a confrontation between striking janitors and Los Angeles officers in Century City last June in which several demonstrators suffered broken limbs; and Gates’ remark that a man who shot and killed a rookie officer was a “Salvadoran drunk” who should have been deported.

The Mexican Consulate also has charged that the Los Angeles Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies may be responsible for the wrongful death of at least six Mexican immigrants in the last 12 months.

“The brutality and the harassment in the Latino and the immigrant community is just as bad as it is in the African-American community,” said Linda Mitchell of the Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights of Los Angeles.

“We’re disappointed that there is really no Latino politician that has protested police brutality as have some of the African-American leaders or even (City Councilman) Michael Woo,” she said. “Everyone else is either hiding or making excuses.” (Woo has called on Gates to resign.)

At the Pico-Aliso projects, residents formed police monitoring committees in late January, after alleging that officers indiscriminately arrested dozens of young people during a sweep of the area.

“They took everybody who looked like a human being--little kids, gang members,” said Lenorado Vilchis of the nearby Dolores Mission Church. “The mothers who came out to complain were treated very rudely by the officers.”

Members of the Committee for Peace in the Barrio--a residents’ group--charge that Los Angeles police officers use obscene language when addressing Latino and black inhabitants of the projects and routinely strike local teenagers while interrogating them. Sometimes, the residents charge, youths are taken to the industrial neighborhoods just between the projects and the river, where they are beaten and interrogated.

In a letter to the department’s Hollenbeck Division, the residents wrote: “We insist that the prevailing attitude of the police toward the people who live in the projects be changed from a hostile, degrading attitude to one of protection, service and respect.”

Capt. Bob Medina of the Hollenbeck Division denies that his officers have committed acts of brutality. Last year, he said, five complaints were lodged against Hollenbeck officers and all proved unfounded. Still, Medina said he has met with Pico-Aliso residents in the last two months to listen to their concerns.

“I think we have a good working relationship with a majority of the residents in that area,” he said. “In roll call, we consistently emphasize (to our officers) the courtesy and compassion aspects of police work.”

The residents of the projects have formed nine teams to monitor police activities in their homes. So far, Loera said, they have not yet documented a serious instance of police abuse. Loera promised they will remain vigilant, taking license and badge numbers of officers whose actions are unappropriate.

Medina said one Hollenbeck officer noted during an arrest a few weeks ago that he was being videotaped from a second-story window.

“ ‘People are watching you,’ ” Medina said he tells his officers. “ ‘As long as you behave professionally, you have nothing to be afraid of.’ ”

Despite her complaints, Loera has seen enough gang shoot-outs and drug violence in her 25 years living in the projects to hope that plenty of officers will stick around and keep her family safe.

“Imagine what it would be like here if we told them not to come into the projects,” she said of the police. “We just don’t want them to hit the muchachos. “