COLUMN ONE : A Gamble to Reform the LAPD : Although somewhat vague, community policing is slowly unfolding. Is it an overrated concoction or the necessary step toward reform? South Bureau is the proving ground.

To Los Angeles neighborhoods where crime has shredded the social order, now comes community-based policing--an idea that is at once disturbingly vague, tantalizingly hopeful and eagerly embraced by people with vastly different notions of what it entails.

To Ping Own, a Taiwanese immigrant with an auto service center near Los Angeles Harbor, it means clearing out the day laborers who gather on the curb outside his business and scare away his customers. To Cleve Freeman, it’s using the police advisory board he heads to clean up a trio of dilapidated houses that have become embroiled in South-Central’s drug trade.

To police officers such as Margaret Mazotta or Keith Thomas, it is a near-endless meeting--convened in parking lots and living rooms, diners and doughnut shops--where residents lay out their concerns and ask for the Los Angeles Police Department’s help in solving them.

And to the institution of the LAPD, community-based policing may be the last best hope for recapturing the public trust shattered by the beating of Rodney G. King, broken again by the response to the 1992 riots, and only recently on the mend.

Yet, despite the enormous stakes, community-based policing remains more of an ideal than a program. It is slowly unfolding across the city, and in South Los Angeles--where a newly assigned deputy chief publicly introduced his version early this year--it faces its greatest test. It is a work in progress, winning accolades despite its vague outlines and encountering resistance from some officers who worry that it distracts from the hard business of law enforcement.

Some residents also are skeptical, unconvinced that the LAPD will recast itself in a friendlier image.

LAPD officials take every opportunity to proclaim that the effort is genuine. Although Police Department leaders and law enforcement scholars draw up the plans, street cops and residents ultimately will be the ones who carry it out. The success or failure of community-based policing in their neighborhoods, particularly in South Los Angeles, will decide whether the idea is an overrated concoction that leaves Los Angeles even more vulnerable than it is or an overdue reform that restores a measure of peace.

Nearly six years ago, when Edward Dabbs came to the Normandale Recreation Center on Halldale Avenue near 224th Street, he found a community program in crisis. Gang members from the neighborhood would congregate at the center, drinking malt liquor and smoking marijuana around the building. Graffiti covered the walls. Broken glass littered the grounds. Frightened residents stayed away. In those days, Dabbs had little company and lots of work.

“My first week here, all I did was paint out graffiti,” Dabbs said. “They had covered every wall with graffiti, and they were started on the sidewalks.”

Conventional policing had failed the Normandale center. Police responded when the center was burglarized or its windows were smashed, but officers can only spend so long at a crime scene. When they left, crime crept back inside.

*

One aim of community-based policing is to approach problems differently, to focus on preventing crime rather than simply arresting criminals. In this case, that job fell to Margaret Mazotta, a personable, tough, 10-year veteran who nimbly juggles two roles--social worker and street cop.

As she travels around what the department calls her Basic Car Area--a long, narrow band of Los Angeles that runs from Palos Verdes Drive North to 190th Street--Mazotta pauses to chat with merchants and homeowners. She calls out to a minister and drops by a schoolyard to hear how various students are doing. Children who know Mazotta come running up to her car when she stops--they know from experience that she is a reliable source of baseball cards and balloons.

But she is not shy about mixing it up either. When during a recent tour of duty a call came over the radio about a possible attempted kidnaping, she set down her coffee, said a quick goodby to a couple of neighbors and sprinted to her car.

And when she spotted a group of idlers gathering near Ping Own’s auto center, she did not hesitate to challenge them. One of the men, hurrying to get away, darted across the street. She cited him for jaywalking, explaining the violation in Spanish.

“I am an immigrant too,” said Own, his voice tight with frustration, as the men shuffled off. “But these men, they scare my customers. They ruin my business. That’s why I need the Police Department to help, to save my business.”

Faced with the stubborn problems at the Normandale center, Mazotta blended soft touch and stern resolve. She corralled other officers from the Harbor Division to increase patrols. She organized anti-graffiti efforts and trash cleanups. She took a few of the children at the center under her wing. When she enters these days, they come running up to her for advice and a hug.

Gradually, the center recovered. Once-fearful elderly people now drop by for senior programs. On Easter, roughly 300 children scrambled for eggs as a sea of parents dressed in their Sunday best looked on. On a recent Tuesday morning, the only sounds were of thumping basketballs and a few squeals of laughter from tiny children on swings. The walls were clean, not a trace of graffiti.

Mazotta’s work at the center has solved few crimes and resulted in few arrests, the goals of traditional policing. But residents of the neighborhood say Mazotta’s efforts have given them a community center, made them feel safer in their homes and happier in their lives.

“We’ve taken this park back,” Mazotta said. “If we can do that, we’ve not only served the community, we’ve protected it as well.”

*

As LAPD officials try to develop a coherent plan for community-based policing, they sometimes convey the impression of religious leaders struggling to remember what was written on the lost tablets of their faith.

In the 1970s, then-Chief Ed Davis founded Neighborhood Watch, a rudimentary form of community-based policing, and also something known as the “basic car plan.” Each of those programs--distant relatives of the British bobby system founded in 1829--emphasized crime prevention and stressed community contact over arrests and incarceration.

Davis’ approach was de-emphasized by his successor, Daryl F. Gates. Although he initiated some community-based efforts, Gates built a Police Department far more military in its bearing and its relationship with the community. The emphasis shifted to a tougher style of law enforcement. The vestiges of Davis and his community-oriented department gradually receded from memory.

Then came the police beating of King, the Christopher Commission inquiry, the riots and the departure of Gates. He was succeeded by Willie L. Williams, an enthusiastic proponent of community-based policing who arrived from Philadelphia armed with a mandate to return the LAPD to its roots, to the programs that Davis pioneered two decades ago.

Some of the LAPD’s initial efforts to rekindle the spirit of community-based policing have been halting. At one point last year, the department sought to change the LAPD’s fabled slogan, “To protect and to serve,” to one police leaders thought might be more suited to the new mission. The proposed slogan: “To protect and to serve our communities. “

Some officers chuckled over that suggestion, privately deriding it as a cosmetic change that did little to address the challenges of retooling the department. Williams withdrew the proposal.

On the streets, meanwhile, community policing was taking shape in the San Fernando Valley where, until recently, Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker served as the top LAPD official. Late last year, Kroeker was transferred to the South Bureau--a sprawling, hard-to-manage area of Los Angeles that encompasses scores of neighborhoods from the tidy homes of San Pedro to some tough neighborhoods in South-Central.

The Valley has its trouble spots, but the police administration views South Bureau as a far more difficult challenge. That part of the city is home to the city’s highest crime rates and the greatest tension between the community and the Police Department. As a result, South Bureau is widely seen as the most difficult proving ground for community-based policing, the place where it either will thrive or perish.

In December, Williams gave his officers the LAPD’s blueprint for community policing. Administrative Order No. 10 called for a rejuvenation of Davis’ basic car plan and a reconstruction of public confidence in the department through the creation of police advisory boards.

A month later, Kroeker took the mission to the streets of South Los Angeles. On a warm January morning, Kroeker introduced 30 senior lead officers, the front line of the community-based policing effort, whom he described as “some of the finest police officers that anyone will ever meet.” Men and women of varying backgrounds, some of Kroeker’s senior lead officers have more than a decade on the job, others are newer. But they share a conviction that officers can do their jobs better if they work with residents, not against them.

They project an image--optimistic, open, accommodating--that was on display at Kroeker’s newsconference. With dozens of reporters and curious residents looking on and his senior lead officers beaming behind him, Kroeker debuted his program at a location rich in symbolism: the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues, site of one of the LAPD’s most conspicuous failures.

*

Community-based policing will be a hard sell in some quarters of South Bureau. Take, for instance, the modest shopping center at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, one of many that burned during the riots.

Today, the mall is rebuilt, but the shopkeepers no longer depend on the Police Department for their well-being. Once exposed to the street, the mall now is surrounded by a forbidding, black fence. The gates close at night. Security guards pace the parking lot during the day.

“The sense I get from people is that the police are not their friends,” Robert Munoz, manager of a video store at the mall, said recently. “There’s other areas where I’ve seen the police closer to the community. Here, they’re trying to do it through the papers and through TV, but they need to get out and talk to people.”

The LAPD’s public pronouncements about community policing have barely reached these merchants or their patrons. Some shake their heads in puzzlement when asked about the idea, some commend the effort but say they have yet to see results. Others simply dismiss the department’s promises.

“It’s the same here as always,” said Bruce Fisher, who lives in the neighborhood. “If anything, it’s worse. . . . They (the police) show no respect for us.”

*

On a recent drizzly Saturday afternoon, Officer Keith Thomas got an earful from the community he serves. The community he grew up in. The same community he lives in today.

One man told Thomas of a nearby house where a drug dealer peddles crack in the afternoons. Another let him know about a local park where young men spend the day drinking, gambling and smoking dope. A third complained about a liquor store where prostitutes solicit customers. Yet another raised a common fear, that of reprisals against those who cooperate with police: “A lot of us are worried about gang intimidation,” the middle-aged woman said. “If I call you, do you have to come to my house?”

Thomas, a gregarious, barrel-chested officer with nine years on the department, fielded each concern, offering suggestions, promising that he would request patrols and personally check the trouble spots. To the woman afraid of retaliation, he pledged understanding and discretion.

“I can call you or, if I come to your house, I won’t bring the black-and-white (police car), and I won’t come in uniform,” he said. “I can come and sit on your porch, and we’ll watch the problem. I look like everyone else.”

Already, Thomas has registered a string of successes in his area, a mixture of middle-class and run-down neighborhoods that stretch from 79th Street to 108th Street.

Of those early victories, however, none is sweeter than what happened at 84th Street and Kansas Avenue.

At a small house near that intersection, drug dealers were running a bustling business, exchanging crack for cash through a mail slot. Users would smoke the drugs in the area around the house, cars would stack up outside, and residents of a nearby retirement home were forced to endure threats and indignities--customers would block the sidewalks, forcing wheelchair-bound seniors into the street. People got mugged. Car thefts skyrocketed. So did prostitution.

The intersection had drawn the attention of the local councilman, Mark Ridley-Thomas, and when a police advisory board was formed, 84th and Kansas topped its list of problem spots.

“We don’t just want you to come in and arrest the people with the drugs,” board President Gloria Jean Howard, a forceful and enthusiastic woman, told Thomas. “We want a real resolution, a lasting one.”

Traditional policing offered little hope of achieving that. The house at the corner was fortified with a series of iron doors, the outer ones specially mounted to resist crowbars. Sentries were often posted on the roof. Officers worried that by the time they got inside the building, all the drugs would have been disposed of.

So Thomas took a different tack. He started off by donning street clothes and videotaping the scene. He shared that tape with the district attorney’s office, while Councilman Ridley-Thomas solicited the help of the Falcon unit, an innovative, multi-agency group that can confiscate property involved in the drug trade. The owners, at first reluctant to oust their trouble-making tenants, softened considerably when Falcon officers threatened to seize the building.

At the same time, officers were bringing pressure on the tenants, serving warrants and arresting customers. Two weeks ago, the suspects took off, flinging their belongings into the alley, at last leaving a community they had terrorized for months.

Last week, tow trucks carted off a few abandoned vehicles from the property. Building and safety workers boarded up the house. Cleanup crews hauled off the garbage while a representative of Ridley-Thomas monitored the scene.

“We knocked that problem off our list,” Officer Thomas told the residents at their community meeting. “Now we’re on to the next case. Eventually, we’ll get every one of those things off the list, and we’ll work on something else, like beautifying our neighborhood.”

But the press of crime offers little opportunity to bask in victories. As Thomas strolled the property last week, a call came in summoning officers to a possible break-in a block away. Less than a minute after Thomas was talking to a boyhood friend about life in the neighborhood, he and other officers were bursting inside someone’s home, guns drawn, braced for the worst.

No one was inside. This time.

*

At the heart of community-based policing in its current LAPD incarnation is a nascent network of police advisory boards--panels that the department hopes will eventually draw hundreds of volunteers and form the focal point of police-community relations.

The city had a handful of such panels before Williams mandated creation of boards in all 18 of the LAPD’s geographic divisions in December. But as the boards grow in number and stature, they are raising new questions about how and by whom the Police Department will be managed. Some politicians, most notably Councilman Ridley-Thomas, have raised concerns about the process for selecting advisory board members and about a department rule excluding council members and their staffs from serving.

The LAPD has tried to prevent the boards from becoming politicized. Already, it has had to rein in a few. In the Valley, one Neighborhood Watch group used its newsletter to criticize a City Council member. The members of that group were warned that politics had no place in literature that bore the Police Department’s seal of approval.

In the South Bureau, the advisory boards are being encouraged to offer guidance and direction. There are limits, certainly, but for the most part they have yet to be tested. What happens, some officials wonder quietly, if one of the boards directs its local police officers to stop carrying batons? Or to revise their shooting policy?

“We’re going to push until they say: ‘No.’ That will tell us what the limit is,” said Cleve Freeman, 46, a soft-spoken but determined Texas native who became president of his police advisory board in January. “We want results. We’ve done enough talking. We need to improve the quality of life in our city.”

Freeman and his colleagues have targeted three houses where graffiti, gangs and drugs have taken hold. At a recent meeting of their advisory board, they informed their senior lead officer that they wanted action in those areas. In return, they pledged to help the department by keeping an eye on the houses and by calling in anytime problems arise.

“We’ll measure our success by looking back at our goals, those three houses,” Freeman said. “Did we do everything humanly possible? Did those problems get solved? If not, we failed; but if so, we will have made this a better place.”

Reaching Out (BullDog Edition, A24)

On Dec. 3, 1993, Police Chief Willie L. Williams released to his officers the LAPD’s most far-reaching explanation to date on community-based policing. That document, Administrative Order No. 10, outlines the LAPD’s definition of community policing and the chief’s most current proposals for implementing it citywide. According to the order:

“Community policing is a guiding philosophy which strengthens the partnership between law enforcement and all the people in the communities we serve. It draws upon our goals to protect and serve by broadening and strengthening our ability to succeed in reducing crime and fear of crime. Through the empowerment of our employees and our customers, a true problem-solving partnership can be created for the good of all.”

To implement that philosophy, Williams directed his officers to “implement change by focusing on three of the most important issues facing the department today:

* Rebuilding our patrol force and rejuvenating the basic car plan;

* Developing a strategic plan in order to develop goals and strategies for the future;

* Rebuilding public confidence in the Police Department through the development of police community councils for all 18 geographic areas.”

Source: Los Angeles Police Department, Administrative Order No. 10.