LAPD to embed 10 officers at Pacoima’s San Fernando Gardens through latest community-policing project
The San Fernando Valley’s only public housing project soon will be home to a new kind of beat cop, and city officials hope the program will show the Los Angeles Police Department’s radical experiment with community policing is still working.
San Fernando Gardens — a 1,500-resident, World War II-era development of low-slung, cream-colored apartment blocks located in the heart of Pacoima — will host the city’s latest Community Safety Partnership starting Saturday.
Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, LAPD Chief Michel Moore and other officials will launch the program with a community event at the project. They expect hundreds of residents from around the area to turn out for food and games.
In a statement, Rodriguez’s office said the 10 CSP officers and a supervisor will be “tasked with developing positive police-community relationships through sports and educational programs, addressing crime trends in collaboration with community members, and exercising law enforcement duties through a long-term problem-solving approach.”
The San Fernando Gardens CSP is the city’s ninth. The first partnerships were set up in L.A.’s most violent housing projects, mostly in South L.A.
The idea was to embed a team of officers in the projects to talk to residents and solve quality of life issues. That could mean anything from starting youth sports programs to fixing lighting on darkened streets to chasing away violent, stray dogs.
The program is a huge departure from LAPD’s traditional response to crime in low-income, majority black and Latino communities.
Twenty-five years ago, LAPD employed a boots-on-the-ground strategy, swarming areas around housing projects, or other crime-plagued communities, at certain times in an effort to prevent shootings and killings.
Violent arrests might follow, as well as frequent stops of innocent people. Those tactics alienated residents.
“If we saw someone committing a crime, you put handcuffs on them and you take them to jail,” said Captain David Grimes, who commands LAPD’s Foothill Division covering Pacoima.
“What we figured out over the years was that arresting people and putting them in jail doesn’t make crime go away.”
Officers assigned to the CSP will still make arrests if they witness someone committing a violent crime. But Grimes gave the example of a teenage tagger seen spray-painting graffiti on a house or a wall — the goal now is to divert that child to more resources, not put them behind bars.
Numerous L.A. officials, including Mayor Eric Garcetti and Chief Moore, have become believers in the program. The first four CSPs were credited with helping reduce gang homicides in projects like Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs to nearly zero in most years after they were set up.
“I am sold on this,” Grimes said of the program. “I believe it. I’ve been to enough meetings. I’m convinced it works.”
While San Fernando Gardens has been mostly free of intense gang violence since the early 2000s, crime is still common. Poverty and drugs in the project itself, and the neighborhoods nearby, are still issues.
On most days, however, the Gardens themselves are mostly quiet. Still, Grimes said he has seen worrying trends in the crime rate for the area. Part 1 crimes, which include most violent crimes, overall are up nearly double in the projects from 2014 to 2018.
There were no killings in the Gardens last year, and just one the year before. But other crimes — aggravated assault, domestic violence, burglaries, robberies, etc. — are on the rise.