Kroeker Has High Hopes for Valley LAPD Community Policing

Shortly after being appointed a little more than two years ago to the top Los Angeles police post in the San Fernando Valley, Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker instituted a Valleywide community policing program.

Each of the senior lead officers assigned to the 31 geographic patrol areas that make up the 220-square-mile Valley began working full time with citizens and other officers in an effort to increase community involvement in fighting crime.

Many programs have followed, from citizen patrols of neighborhoods and surveillance of drug hot spots to establishing a network of so-called police-community representatives and block captains to spread the word.

Question: Though there are various forms of community policing programs throughout the department, the Valleywide effort may be the largest and most ambitious. After two years, how is it going?

Answer: I’m very pleased. It has been beyond my expectations, particularly when in the last two years our department has gone through unprecedented turbulence and a lot of questions about the role of police in our society. We are not there yet, and there is still a lot of violence in our neighborhoods, but we are moving forward.

Q. You mentioned the gap between the police and the community. While the ultimate goal of community policing is reduced crime, do you see it as a more immediate means of healing the wounds in the relationship between the police and the community?

A. There are unfortunately those who see community policing as pretty much community appeasement. You know, “Let’s make all the officers smile and wave to everybody, make sure everybody feels good.” That’s not the objective. The objective is to really do something about the crime problem. I think we are moving in that direction, and I think that while the officers are still in somewhat of a state of flux, particularly in the last month or so we are moving forward in closing the gap as well.

Q. What has happened in the last month to put officers in a state of flux?

A. Well, it is almost like the planets have finally come together as far as the negativity to the officers. You have the bad rap the department took for the way we handled the riots last year, the fact that many officers see fellow officers indicted and prosecuted and convicted. It seems to have all come together to a point where they are carrying a heavy load right now emotionally.

Q. This affects the community policing effort?

A. It does. It is really important that the community policing efforts not be relegated only to the senior lead officers but that every officer participate in solving problems and reaching out to the community and becoming more approachable and communicative. That is going to be our challenge for the year ahead--universal participation by officers in the community policing agenda.

Q. What about the other side of the coin, the response of the citizens to the program?

A. To me that is the most encouraging part. It is almost as though the community just needed a door that they could walk through. They needed an opportunity they could seize and they seized it with gusto. The response to our public meetings, programs offered for participation and volunteer opportunities has been overwhelming.

Q. Who are these people? Are they the people who have always been involved in police programs or are you reaching new people with community policing?

A. There is a group out there that are repeat community participators. But now we are getting the first-timers. People who have never walked into a police station before, we are getting them. We have police community representatives and block captains who a year ago knew nothing about community policing.

Q. Most experts in community policing say that it is a long-term process. You plant the seeds now and reap the benefits years down the road. Two years into this in the Valley, is there any hard indicators yet of it turning the tide on crime or safety in neighborhoods?

A. The temptation is to take a statistical reality--a Valleywide reduction in repressible crime--and turn it into an effect with community policing being the cause. But I am not ready to say that. I think it is premature. I think crime will fluctuate up and down during this time a little bit and our better approach will be to focus on three, four, five years down the road.

Nevertheless, I can’t resist taking a little bit of consolation in the fact that for example in one area, Devonshire Division, robberies are down 25% on one side and on the other side community policing has exploded in that part of the Valley. It is almost irresistible to say that has to be a cause-and-effect relationship. The education of the people, their participation in crime resistance, has to have an effect.

Q. Los Angeles is an underpoliced city. In the Valley there is roughly one officer for every 1,000 people. Can community policing ever be fully realized here or anywhere else in the city with the department at its current size?

A. I’ve always thought that community policing is not a luxury but a bare-bones necessity for an organization that has become anorexic in its strength. We now desperately need the help of the community because that is where the energy lies. As we grow, we will grow in the model that has emerged from this undernourished time. And it will be a good model because it will be operating at better efficiency.

Q. What has Chief Willie Williams’ involvement in community policing in the Valley been?

A. I have discussed quite a few of our programs with him and I know quite a few other people have too. They have come to him from the standpoint of community endorsements. I know from comments he has made to me and in community setting that he is very much behind the direction in which we are going here. Also, the department-wide strategic plan for the next five years and the deployment of a National Institute of Justice grant in the furtherance of community policing is moving in the very direction we have been moving in the Valley. So Chief Williams has provided an endorsement for the direction we are going and unqualified support.

Q. If we sit down here at this time next year, what differences or improvements in community policing will we be able to note in the Valley?

A. I would hope we have a few more police officers out there on the street, that the base level of morale, the esprit, of our officers will have come up, and that we have almost unmanageable community participation. And that I will be able to turn to the vital signs of the community’s crime picture and point to a downturn. I also hope that the fear level will be reduced.

Q. What could be done better right now by both the police and the community?

A. There are two things to emphasize in what remains of 1993. One is to make sure that the senior lead officers and the other officers don’t develop a wall between them. Instead, they have to consolidate more and more of their efforts to make sure community policing becomes part of everybody’s business. Then on the other side, in the community, I am pushing real hard to make sure that we move toward this ideal of a block captain on every block who will assume the accountability for mobilizing and resolving problems on that block. I am pushing in those two directions.

Q. You once said that you wanted to be able to throw a dart at a map of the Valley and no matter where the dart lands be able to name a block captain for that street. Do you still think that is achievable?

A. In some areas, I am ready to throw the dart. In others we’ve got work to do. But I do hope that maybe not next year but that five years from now you can throw the dart, eyes closed, and wherever it lands we will be able to pop a name up on the computer and say that’s the block captain for that street and, guess what, crime there is down substantially since 1993. Is that dewy-eyed optimism? I hope not, because that is the direction we are going.