Deployment of Officers by LAPD Questioned : Police: More than 400 have clerical or other duties. Critics say these tasks could be handled by civilians.

The Los Angeles Police Department, which portrays itself as chronically understaffed with 8,200 officers, deploys an average of only 315 of them per shift to ride in patrol cars and respond to calls for help from the city’s 3.5 million residents.

But at the same time, officers have been assigned to such tasks as these:

One supervises a PX for colleagues, including a gun store, a restaurant and bar.

Another plans sports tournaments for police.

Still another paints traffic safety murals on freeway walls.

Dozens do administrative chores that are essentially clerical.

In all, more than 400 officers are assigned to jobs that city auditors or even some within the police force contend do not require police skills and powers.

How the department uses its officers--thousands are assigned to specialties ranging from homicide investigations to noise control--has become increasingly important as the city tries to cope with a fiscal crisis, a rise in serious crime and a recommendation by the Christopher Commission for a different style of law enforcement, called community-based policing.

Elected officials and LAPD administrators agree that community-based policing will require placing more officers on the streets. But where these officers should come from is a divisive issue.

Police administrators say they need more officers and have asked the city this year for funds to hire 443 more. Christopher Commission Chairman Warren Christopher and some elected officials, such as Mayor Tom Bradley and City Council budget committee Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, have said the department can do more with the officers it already has.

This week, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates is scheduled to tell the Police Commission how he plans to run a pilot program of community-based policing at five of the 18 neighborhood police stations. Community-based policing is a philosophy that calls for police to work cooperatively with residents to decide the best ways to fight crime.

In light of the staffing controversy, The Times interviewed 80 police officers, city officials and law enforcement experts and reviewed city budget documents, LAPD staffing reports and an audit by the city administrative officer. The examination showed:

* There are not enough officers in the field now to adequately perform the most basic police functions, much less take on community-based policing. Officers are unable to respond rapidly to many calls for help and unable to do thorough investigations of many serious crimes, including some murders.

* Despite the crunch in the field, hundreds of officers are used to perform tasks that, critics say, require little or no police expertise, could be done at much less cost by civilians, or, in a few cases, might not need to be done at all.

These tasks include processing requests for electrical outlets at police stations, raising money for police charities, operating video cameras, and teaching schoolchildren to say no to drugs in the much-touted DARE anti-drug program.

* The LAPD is such a complex organization that officials say it is very difficult to find out where all officers are assigned on a given day. So many are “on loan” from their regular assignments for an ever-shifting array of special projects that even the payroll section cannot find 50 to 250 officers when it sends out paychecks every two weeks.

* The department has 2,600 civilian employees and is seeking permission from the City Council to hire 200 more--mainly clerk-typists and communications dispatchers. But the department remains resistant to hiring civilians for many jobs that seem to require neither badges nor guns.

Part of the resistance comes from officers who say they do not want to forfeit the convenience of daytime desk jobs, or who prefer to not return to dangerous work. Their union went to court to block Gates’ proposal to send them into the field just two days a month, then took two years to negotiate a compromise--still not implemented--that would allow the chief to deploy them one day.

* Some jobs that seem suited for civilians are reserved for officers who are restricted by physical limitations to light duty. But many jobs that require only light-duty capabilities are done by able-bodied officers. The department is trying to find out how many.

* Civilians work for much lower salaries and pensions than officers. Taxpayers could save $32,000 a year in salary and benefits by replacing a sergeant with a civilian.

But even Police Department managers who have tried to hire civilians have been thwarted by a virtual city hiring freeze for civilian staff. Another obstacle has been the inability to develop long-term promotional possibilities for civilians that might attract more of them to the Police Department.

Gates declined to be interviewed for this article. But other officials note that the department has a ratio of officers to residents that is one of the lowest among big-city police forces. Those interviewed were divided in their perceptions of how efficiently the LAPD uses those officers. Some maintained that the department is operating as efficiently as possible.

“I see very little waste in this organization,” said Cmdr. Martin Pomeroy, who heads the department’s largest specialized unit, its 417-officer Narcotics Group.

But Assistant Chief David Dotson, the department’s third-ranking officer, said the LAPD is not using all its resources in the wisest fashion. He noted that the department has shifted a lot of jobs to civilian employees and continues to look for ways to convert more.

Police Commissioner Jesse A. Brewer, a former assistant chief, said: “I think it’s time to examine everything, including the sacred cows. I think we need to get more people back to the field. . . . We keep telling people that that is the most important function of the Police Department, yet we don’t act that way.”

The Police Department has historically resisted suggestions from outsiders about how it could best use its officers.

Gates responded to an audit by the city administrative officer in 1981 by throwing the report to the ground at a news conference and stomping on it.

More recently, the department failed to respond to a request by the City Council that it consider shifting officers from various specialized units to increase the number of officers available for patrol.

Because of overtime caps, illnesses and the necessity of operating around the clock, the Police Department finds that it takes a pool of about 1,900 officers to field the average of 315 who ride in 175 patrol cars on an average eight-hour shift.

In addition to the 1,900 officers assigned to cars, hundreds more are on the streets on foot patrols, motorcycles or in cars, pursuing specialized duties such as traffic, vice or gang control.

Despite their presence, the LAPD’s level of patrol-car staffing makes for a very thin blue line, and once or twice each busy weekend, the line breaks, said Police Lt. David Musil, a watch commander at the department’s emergency communications center.

“A woman in her house reports someone is breaking in at 2 a.m. and we have no one to send,” Musil said. “Or shots are being fired into the house right now. We look for units and there is no one available.”

Under such circumstances, officials said, it may take more than 14 minutes for a car to get to the scene.

Typically, the department says, a car responds to a life-threatening emergency in seven minutes--a modest goal that the department and City Council agreed upon in 1988. The International Assn. of Chiefs of Police says “two to five minutes for highest priority calls has become a standard toward which many police agencies aspire.”

To achieve the seven-minute emergency response, non-patrol officers on the streets supplement the patrol car force by listening to radios and responding to emergencies to “stop the clock.” But help dries up for more routine calls.

“I don’t see anybody volunteering to handle a neighbor dispute or a domestic dispute or a business dispute,” Brewer said. “Those are the kinds of calls that back up.”

Los Angeles police officers take an average of half an hour to respond to what they term less threatening, but still urgent calls, such as a prowler who has just fled or an indecent exposure in progress, according to department studies.

For what the police call “routine” disturbances and disputes, it takes an average of 50 minutes to respond.

The nearly 600 detectives at neighborhood police stations are as hard-pressed as patrol officers, some of them said.

“You very seldom get an opportunity to do investigative work,” said Hollywood burglary Detective Lance Smith.

Other detectives say they are frequently so busy that they only have time to “investigate” those cases where a crime victim knows the suspect’s name.

Without that, Dotson confirmed, “usually . . . nothing’s going to get done.”

If there are merely clues to a suspect’s identity--such as a partial license plate of an armed robber’s getaway car--the case is likely to be “investigated” with one phone call, detectives said.

“You make a phone call to the victim,” said Detective Lt. Mike Melton of Southeast Division. “ ‘Did the guy come over and confess? No? If he does, call me.’ ”

Even some murder cases receive incomplete investigations.

Plagued by a low, 53% solution rate to murders last fall in the department’s South Bureau, which encompasses four divisions, Detective Lt. Mike G. Markulis decided to take inventory of the area’s 150 unsolved cases.

His detectives told him they believed they could solve 71 of the murders--if they only had time to do basic work such as showing photographs of suspects to witnesses, interviewing suspects, locating suspects, re-interviewing witnesses or obtaining a warrant and conducting a search. The department responded by temporarily assigning more detectives to reduce the backlog.

Against this backdrop of crisis, other officers are on assignments that critics say take them too far away from crime in the streets.

For example, Officer Steve Rose has spent the last year and a half painting murals on freeway walls.

“The Police Department is about more than crime in the streets,” Rose, a 19-year veteran, said when he was interviewed atop scaffolding on a shoulder of the Hollywood Freeway downtown. He is painting a mural urging passing motorists to designate a driver if they decide to drink.

Rose is part of a seven-member traffic safety unit whose other duties include handing out brochures at auto shows and the county fair. He and five other officers in the unit are able-bodied.

Officer Charles Foote, also able-bodied, has spent the last 12 years supervising maintenance workers at the Police Academy on behalf of a charitable trust, the Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club, a professional and social association that owns most of the buildings at the facility.

Foote also supervises the club’s retail operations--a gun store and bar for officers, and a restaurant and an LAPD souvenir shop that are open to the public. The outlets rang up $3.6 million in sales in 1990.

Officer Larry Moore’s job for the past 10 years has been to organize sports leagues for his fellow officers. In addition to softball and basketball leagues, Moore plans racquetball tournaments and 10K runs.

“My function is to organize an athletic program--a physical-fitness program--and encourage officers to participate,” he said.

A sergeant and two officers supervised by Lt. Bruce Ward process about 130 parade permits per year--less than one per week per officer. They send the permits to the geographical divisions where the parades will take place and arrange for parade staffing.

In addition, Ward said, his officers sometimes “go out and do real police work” by helping direct traffic at parades themselves. He said they also assist in disaster planning.

The city administrative office criticized the parade operation in a 1981 audit, saying that “less than two-tenths of one man-year is required to handle the workload.” But Ward said there is more work than that.

Sgt. George Reister supervises two other sergeants and a police officer who coordinate requests for leased space and items such as new electrical outlets, awnings, soundproofing and room expansions at police stations.

The city administrative office has maintained for the last decade that numerous clerical jobs in patrol divisions could be done “quite capably by non-sworn employees.”

About 72 officers--or four per neighborhood police station--are assigned “sundry administrative tasks” such as handling bail money or keeping track of which officers have been subpoenaed, said Lt. Dan Koenig, who heads an audit unit in the department’s Office of Operations.

“That’s the kind of bleed-off stuff that kills our deployment,” said Dotson, who added that such jobs could be handled by civilians.

At least 20 other officers are assigned to court liaison duties, officials said. They coordinate the appearances of police officers in court. The head of one 14-officer unit, Detective Dennis Tilton, said civilians might be able to do some of these jobs.

Another 250 are assigned to sit at the front desks of police stations, answer questions and take reports from the public, according to an analysis by the Office of Operations.

The CAO has concluded that one officer per shift--or about 100--would suffice and that the remaining slots could be filled by civilians.

The department twice tried to get 30 civilians to sit at desks and another 30 to assist detectives in clerical functions, but it failed to reach agreement with the city personnel department on how to do it.

“I think we need to take another look at how to get civilians into these positions,” Brewer said.

Ten officers are budgeted for the department’s public affairs division, whose main activities include answering correspondence from citizens and planning awards presentations and the annual police-celebrity golf tournament.

The tournament is a fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation, which gave $369,000 in 1990 to officers disabled in the line of duty and to surviving spouses and children of officers killed in the line of duty.

No one has suggested that it is not a good cause. But a supervisor, who spoke on condition that he not be named, asked: “If it’s such a good cause, why can’t police officers volunteer their own time for it?”

Cmdr. Walter Mitchell, to whom the public affairs section reports, responded: “My personal opinion is that police officers don’t have enough of their own time.”

Community relations officers at neighborhood stations supplement the work of officers in the public affairs section by coordinating sales of tickets to the golf tournament in their areas.

The department sends out tallies that show station commanders how their ticket sales compare to other stations.

“Commanding officers start shaking if they’re down at the bottom,” said the supervisor. “(Some commanders) take people out of the field . . . to beat on doors and sell golf tickets.” A second supervisor, who also spoke anonymously, confirmed the tactic.

Mitchell said he was unaware of the practice.

But Dotson said such practices “would not surprise me.” He said the department’s use of “considerable sworn on-duty resources” for the golf tournament “is a question that’s been debated around here for a long time. I don’t think anybody is totally comfortable with that.”

Another charity that gets time from on-duty police officers is the William H. Parker Los Angeles Police Foundation.

Sgt. Michael Mines and another officer estimate that they each spend one-fifth of their time planning sporting events to raise money for the foundation, which provides funds for officers to receive specialized training--such as lessons in management techniques.

Recent fund-raising events have included bass fishing, tennis and golf tournaments.

The Police Department has only once given a formal accounting of the staff time devoted to such events, according to Police Commission staff. That was in 1988 when Gates told the commission that it took 140 days of an officer’s time and 52 days of civilian employees’ time to set up a tennis tournament.

Gates hailed the tournament, which netted $77,000, as “a complete success.”

Fourteen officers are assigned to socialize with leaders of non-police unions by attending parties, funerals and golf tournaments with them.

The unit, known to critics inside the department as “the country club,” is formally called the Labor Relations Division. It is the department’s oldest crime-prevention effort.

Capt. Charles LaBrow and his officers are supposed to use their contacts with union leaders to cool tensions and cut down on crime during strikes. Officials say the unit also investigates about 80 crimes arising from labor disputes each year.

As proof of his unit’s success. LaBrow points to the relatively high degree of labor peace in Los Angeles, which he acknowledges is not a heavily unionized city. Union and management leaders endorse the operation.

“It must be obvious that a reduction of personnel (will) certainly lead to an increase in violent strike activity,” said a Police Department statement.

But the city administrative office suggested last year, as it had in its 1981 audit, that the unit could be disbanded, and its duties absorbed by other units, with “no discernible impact on the public” at an annual savings of $800,000 in salaries and $400,000 in benefits and pension costs.

Five officers are budgeted to serve in the department’s television unit, where they use video cameras to record training tapes scripted by other officers, and to record demonstrations, crime scenes and Gates’ news conferences.

Six officers are authorized for the press relations section of the chief’s office to field questions from the media.

Thirteen more teach physical fitness; five teach Spanish and another five teach driving, according to 1991 budget documents.

The city administrative office recently asked the department to consider replacing officers in these teaching jobs with civilians. But the department concluded that “civilianization . . . would be inappropriate at this time without ultimately compromising public and officer safety.”

Three officers, all detectives, spend their days monitoring computers that keep track of when someone has more than four false alarms in a 12-month period, and is therefore due to be assessed a $65 fine. Detective Jim Dillon, who supervises the unit, acknowledged that civilians could be taught to handle these jobs, which include personal visits to repeat violators.

The department has also been criticized for wasting manpower through duplication of effort.

Thirty-five officers are employed as helicopter pilots, earning an average of $68,000 a year. The pilots fly with other officers who act as observers and are paid an average of $54,000 annually. The observers’ main job is to offer tactical suggestions to police officers pursuing suspects on the ground.

Why the pilots have to be sworn is not clear. The city administrative office reasoned that because the observers were sworn, the pilots did not have to be. But the Police Department says, in essence, that two sworn officers are better than one.

The department uses the same philosophy in assigning at least 80% of its officers on patrol to two-officer cars. The department says this is necessary for safety and efficiency because many calls require the response of at least two officers.

But George Sullivan, a private deployment consultant used by the LAPD and other departments, said a workload study would probably show that the department could use more single-officer cars.

The LAPD’s resistance to returning more officers to patrol is attributable in part to department traditions and wage structures that make it desirable for officers to leave patrol work for specialized units.

The City Council formally requested in 1988 that the department undertake a “departmentwide systematic review of all sworn, non-patrol functions” with an eye toward freeing up more officers from specialized units to place on patrol. But the department did not respond to the request.

Gates ran into difficulties in late 1989 when he tried to order 600 able-bodied, desk-bound officers to hit the streets in uniform two days a month.

The police union, known as the Los Angeles Police Protective League, filed a lawsuit to block Gates, contending that he needed to negotiate first.

“We were not opposed to this,” said Lt. George V. Aliano, then the league president. “We just wanted to address members’ concerns that (there would be sufficient) training and safety and communications equipment” for officers who, in some cases, hadn’t been in the field for years. “They felt uncomfortable and insecure in going out without that kind of support.”

Officer Frank Mezquita, a league director at the time, said in a sworn declaration: “Many officers to whom I have spoken have expressed reservations about field duties based on personal, safety or medical considerations.”

An exasperated Gates videotaped a message to patrol officers, saying that a few “pantywaists” were standing in the way of his efforts to bring reinforcements to the field.

“Believe me,” he said, “I can’t believe this. . . . I thought we were all signed on to do this job, which is basically a street job.”

Now, after two years of negotiations, a compromise has been reached: The chief can order desk-bound personnel onto the streets one day a month, rather than two.

But department sources say many details remain to be worked out before reinforcements arrive.

LAPD Staffing Breakdown

Of the 8,190 officers in the Los Angeles Police Department, 6,784 are assigned to the Office of Operations, which is responsible for patrol and most detective functions. Operations has 994 detectives, 695 sergeants and 222 officers of higher rank. It has 4,873 regular police officers whose functions are illustrated in the chart below. Patrol Car Force: 1,964: 40% Traffic: 598: 12% Foot Beats: 223: 5% Detective Trainees: 490: 10% Special Task Forces: 837: 17% Desk, Station Operations and Administration: 401: 8% Other: 360: 8% Note: The remaining 1,406 officers in the department are assigned to a variety of other functions, including training, personnel, communications, narcotics, internal affairs, DARE and organized crime.

Source: LAPD Office of Operations

HOW THIN IS THE BLUE LINE?

To determine how many of Los Angeles’ 8,200 police officers are in patrol cars assigned to respond to calls for help, The Times used figures supplied by the Police Department. Officials said they deploy 525 cars citywide to answer radio calls during each 24-hour period and that about four out of every five cars carry two officers. This translates into 945 officers per day--or 315 per eight-hour shift. Actual staffing varies from shift to shift to reflect workload. For example, more officers work evenings than work day or overnight shifts, and more officers work Fridays and Saturdays than Mondays and Tuesdays.

Calls for Police: Response Times

One measure of a police department’s success is how quickly it responds to calls for help. Los Angeles police screen calls more thoroughly than most big city departments and dispatch units to fewer. The LAPD will not, for example, send cars to most traffic accidents involving only property damage, and takes reports of stolen cars, when no suspect has been seen, over the phone. Response times to the 26% of calls to which units are dispatched are shown below, in minutes. DEFINING TYPES OF CALLS

Emergency: A life-threatening situation such as a robbery or other major crime in progress.

Urgent: A non-life-threatening situation that still requires a quick response, such as vandalism in progress or a prowler who has just fled.

Routine: Calls that do not require quick response, such as business disputes or minor disturbances.

Emergency Urgent Routine Calls Calls Calls TYPICAL TYPICAL TYPICAL AREA/BUREAU RESPONSE RESPONSE RESPONSE *Central 5.9 24.5 38.3 *Rampart 6.9 40.5 66.6 *Hollenbeck 6.6 29.3 50.1 *Northeast 8.0 29.7 48.0 *Newton 6.5 28.5 48.9 Central Bureau Overall 6.8 31.6 53.4 *Southwest 6.9 31.7 53.5 *Harbor 6.9 27.6 46.2 *77th Street 6.7 32.9 55.9 *Southeast 6.5 30.9 52.9 South Bureau Overall 6.7 31.3 52.6 *Hollywood 6.4 32.0 50.5 *Wilshire 6.8 34.6 56.3 *West L.A. 7.4 27.1 36.9 *Pacific 6.9 28.9 46.3 West Bureau Overall 6.8 31.2 49.1 *Van Nuys 7.9 34.9 54.3 *West Valley 7.8 30.7 45.2 *N. Hollywood 6.9 27.6 44.2 *Foothill 8.1 33.0 53.1 *Devonshire 8.4 27.2 40.1 Valley Bureau Overall 7.8 30.9 48.0 CITY OVERALL 7.0 31.2 51.0

NOTE: In calculating its typical response times to emergencies, the LAPD uses a median time rather than an average. Medians are reported here for 1990, the last full year for which they are available.

Average calculations would produce longer times--10 minutes rather than seven minutes in the case of emergencies. Averaging would give undue weight to calls for which long response times were recorded because officers did not promptly alert dispatchers that they had arrived at the scene.

However, for response to urgent and routine calls, the LAPD calculates only average instead of median times. Reported here are averages for 1989-91.