All Quiet on Pico Front, Police Report

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

September 12 -- For years, Pico Neighborhood residents have said they would like to know the officers policing their streets.

Now -- with the coals still glowing from the barbecue send-off of Chief James T. Butts, Jr. -- police say an internal debate is being waged over whether to assign the same sets of officers to patrol the streets of the gang-prone neighborhood.

“We would like to have officers here who people know,” Vega said.

“Ultimately, though,” said Lt. Hector Cavazos, “it’s a decision that’s above us.”

The unusually candid comments, which came during a meeting Monday of the Virginia Avenue Park Advisory Board, cut to the heart of a hotly debated issue in the minority-rich and financially poor neighborhood.

While Butts implemented a strategy known as “community policing,” residents have questioned whether a personal relationship has developed between residents and the officers policing them.

Vega and Cavazos said the same officers are being used more often, with the department rotating them between local schools and the Pico Neighborhood, which has experienced a recent rash of shootings and gang-related violence.

Board members credited several officers assigned to patrol the park with a lull in the violence so far this month, saying they have built personal relationships with the community.

The seeming change of tenor comes one month after the former chief, who left his post this month to help head security at Los Angeles area airports, defended his form of community policing at a meeting packed with angry Pico residents in the Virginia Avenue Park’s Thelma Terry center.

That meeting -- where a host of residents criticized outreach efforts by police -- came on the heals of a week and a half of violence, including a shooting and an alleged sexual assault, which reportedly occurred on the park’s center.

The media, City and police officials watched as Butts repeatedly defended his departments’ efforts to police the neighborhood, which was under a heavy patrol that included helicopter surveillance in an expensive detail known as Operation Safe Streets.

By contrast, Monday’s meeting was nearly empty, with only board members, staff and police in attendance.

With school back in session, tensions in the neighborhood appear to be cooling, and police are taking steps to scale back additional officers used in Operation Safe Streets, the officers present told the board.

The only recent hint of trouble involved a report of a handgun on Lincoln and Pico boulevards, Vega said. The reported gun was never found and no arrest was made.

Graffiti was also scrawled around Michigan and 7th Street, Vega said.

“Overall it’s been a very good month,” he told the board.

While eliminating “overtime” officers on the ground, the department will maintain its eye in the sky, keeping the helicopter hovering, Cavazos said.

“It has been useful,” he said.

While the advisory board did not have enough members to form a quorum, they reviewed protocols on how to better inform the community after a serious incident and how and when to best bring park staff on board when law enforcement is involved in an incident.

City officials said they are investigating ways to have an outside phone service company place calls informing residents within a certain radius of a shooting or other serious crime within five hours of an incident.

Vega said police will “do the best they can” to inform parents and park staff of any interviews or arrests made, within reason.