LAPD Puts a Halt to Public Distribution of Crime Maps

The Los Angeles Police Department is ordering its community liaison officers to stop distributing detailed crime maps, saying they are so specific they could compromise enforcement efforts and even indicate where crime victims or witnesses live.

Top LAPD officials said Wednesday the color-coded maps, which are often photocopied and handed out at neighborhood meetings, were never intended to be made public.

Public distribution of the maps “has never been the department’s policy,” said Deputy Chief Michael J. Bostic, commander of the Valley Bureau. And some well-meaning senior lead officers “got a little too specific about what they were releasing. There are victim safety issues.”

Some community leaders said Wednesday they thought the move was, at least in part, prompted by concerns that private security companies were using the maps to boost business and that the maps were influencing real estate transactions.

The community leaders called the move to keep the maps secret merely the latest effort by Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to whittle away at community-based policing programs, which they credit with reducing crime in their neighborhoods.

“This is just crazy. It’s just contrary to everything [previously] promoted by the LAPD,” said Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn. “We have members who come to [our] meeting every month just to obtain those maps. Lack of information is a handicap.”

Lucente also questioned whether the maps were specific enough to hamper crime-fighting or endanger residents.

Parks could not be reached for comment.

The policy against public distribution of the maps--with one symbol indicating the location of a burglary, for instance, and another for a car theft--is just now being worked out. Studio City homeowners heard the news at a meeting Tuesday night from a senior lead officer who is based at the North Hollywood Division.

At the Van Nuys Division Wednesday, however, some officers said they had not heard of the crackdown, and in fact had been considering publishing a map for the first time in a newsletter now being designed.

Some divisions across the city have been distributing the maps for more than a year--sometimes even posting them on the Internet--but Bostic said he did not learn about the practice until March, when along with Parks he began to plan a Valleywide police newsletter.

Plotted at police headquarters downtown and then analyzed at the 18 LAPD divisions, the maps are intended to help illustrate crime patterns. But they have also been used for other purposes, police officials said.

A private security company made photocopies of one map and distributed it with promotional materials in a neighborhood that had seen several recent crimes, said Capt. Richard Wahler of the North Hollywood Division.

Valley Bureau officers were receiving several calls on some days from real estate companies and security firms requesting maps of certain areas, Valley Bureau Det. Woodrow Parks said.

“It was getting unmanageable and taking time away from what we were supposed to do,” he said.

In addition to concerns over use of the maps by businesses, police officials said the maps can be misleading and unfair if simply handed out without explanation.

“A cluster of crime can appear and disappear in a few weeks, and [a map] of it may cause unnecessary fear,” Wahler said.

Officers will still be allowed to distribute information on the number and types of crimes committed in a neighborhood, so long as they are not plotted on maps.

Even so, the recent decision has once again put some neighborhood activists at odds with Chief Parks and his approach to community-based policing. Last fall, Parks got an earful of angry complaints from residents over his plan to put senior lead officers back on the street as patrol officers and mentors for rookie officers.

Residents criticized that plan, contending that it would sever their ties with local officers and reduce police responsiveness. Word of the map ban elicited similar reactions.

“We believe community policing is on its way out, and that that relationship is being severed by [Chief] Parks,” said Ellen Bagelman, president of the Lake Balboa Homeowners Assn. and a resident of Van Nuys.

Bagelman said she and other residents plan to launch a massive campaign once senior lead officers are removed from the Van Nuys Division--in part by bombarding their local council members’ offices with complaints.

“They’re going to have to listen to us,” Bagelman said. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”

Said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.: “I think people in general are upset with the dismantling of the senior lead officers because people view these officers as their local police chief.”

That very phenomenon, in part, led to the decision over the maps, according to Bostic, because some senior lead officers were releasing information not meant to be distributed to the public.

“Some senior lead officers started to think they were chiefs in their own communities,” Bostic said.

Residents such as Close and Bagelman, however, argue that the information helped their groups react to problems in their neighborhoods.

“By looking at the map you’ll know specific problems that are occurring in your neighborhood so you can take actions to prevent them,” Close said. “For example, if people are being attacked in a particular area, then other people will know not to walk in that area at night. Keeping that type of information secret interferes with a community’s right to know and protect itself.”