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Walking the Beat
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| Recruits from Class 05-05 walk their first foot beat on Sixth Street. More than 40 LAPD rookies will spend the next month on Downtown foot patrols. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
New Program Puts 43 New Cops on Downtown Streets
by Chris Coates
After seven months of textbooks, exams and lectures, rookie LAPD Officer Geraldine Ruiz is ready to get out of the classroom and out on the beat. Her Police Academy training may have prepared her to deal with simulated situations, but it's nothing compared to what she will encounter when she hits the streets in one of the most active divisions in the city.
"Now it's like you'll see it personally, not in a book," said Ruiz, standing on the front stairs of the Central Division headquarters on Skid Row.
Ruiz is one of 43 recruits from Class 05-05 of the LAPD Police Academy who will spend the next month patrolling the streets of Downtown L.A., not in a cruiser but on foot. Through December, the rookies will work 22 foot patrols four days a week, concentrating mostly on the Historic Core and Jewelry, Toy and Fashion districts.
"We'll have all these extra bodies," said Central Division Capt. Andy Smith, who lobbied for the new program to come Downtown. "Officers on patrol can prevent a lot of that crime. During this season, it gets real busy for us."
The patrols are part a new effort by Police Chief William Bratton and the LAPD to bolster community-level training of new officers. Recruits will now spend the last four weeks of their seven months in the police academy out on the streets, walking the beat. Each patrol will cover roughly five to 10 blocks.
It's a big change from how training has been handled in the past. Once a recruit graduated from the academy, they were simply sent to a division, where they would job shadow another officer. The on-the-job training period would only last a few weeks, and did little to prepare rookies for working with real people and situations, said Training Division Lieutenant Nick Zingo.
"When they would leave the academy, they'd go into a police car and the only interaction they have with the public is a negative one," said Zingo, who is in charge of the new officers.
The new program, which Zingo said is the first of its type in the nation, gives rookies the chance to see that most people aren't criminals. Too often their perceptions are shaded from the seat of their patrol cars, which they seldom leave, he said.
"This deployment allows them to have contact with business owners, families out shopping, people going on with their lives," said Capt. Rick Jacobs, commanding officer of the Training Division. For the rookies, it gives them a crash course in crime fighting, community interaction and basic, street-level police work.
"They're getting exposure where they put everything they learned in the academy together," Jacobs said, adding that it also helps the communities. "We try to put them in an area where their presence will have an impact on crime."
The beats have already been tried in the Hollywood and Rampart divisions. Smith said he worked to bring it Downtown for the holidays, which he said usually sees a small spike in burglaries during November and December.
Compared to Hollywood, "the [recruits] that come down here will get a little better experience because we've got a huge diversity in population, a diversity in neighborhoods and a diversity in crime," Smith said.
Last Wednesday morning, the group of mostly male recruits met in the second floor squad room of Central Division for their first day on the beat. They were given the lay of the land - the trouble spots, what to do if they run into problems, even where to grab lunch - before being broken into beats, 10 officers in each. After a curt "Yes, sir," they were off.
For the recruits, it's the first time they get to build on the skills they've learned in the academy. Rookie Officer Allen Krish said he is looking forward to learning police work directly from experienced officers, even if it's only for a few weeks. "This is the opportunity to pick their brains," he said. "Instead of just reading it in a book."
Good for Business
While these types of patrols are a recent addition to L.A., police foot beats are not. In fact, they were in place throughout Downtown as recently as 15 years ago.
Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association (CCEA), a business advocacy group for the Industrial and Toy districts, has worked Downtown since the early 1980s and said foot patrols were a staple for years, especially during the holidays.
"Wherever it mattered to the economy of Downtown Los Angeles, you had LAPD and [Department of Transportation officers] directing traffic. That's what we were used to," she said.
But as the LAPD faced cutbacks, the folksy cop-walking-the-beat was reduced and finally eliminated by the 1990s. Since then, a few community groups, including the CCEA, have filled the void by starting their own monthly neighborhood marches. The local business improvement districts also employ security officers.
Although some business leaders said they would rather have veterans on the street, most praised the decision to deploy more officers despite deep budget cuts in the department.
"It's great to have visibility from the police," said Kent Smith, executive director of the Fashion District Business Improvement District (BID), which represents about 600 business owners. "When the holidays come around, the district is so much busier - so many people are shopping and walking through our district. It's something that we've always asked the LAPD to do."
Capt. Andy Smith, meanwhile, said he hopes Downtown will become a regular training ground for rookie officers. "I'd like to see them down here all the time," he said, something that could smooth the way for more permanent officers being assigned to Downtown.
"We have to," he said. "The population is increasing exponentially."
Contact Chris Coates at chris@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/21/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
"Now it's like you'll see it personally, not in a book," said Ruiz, standing on the front stairs of the Central Division headquarters on Skid Row.
Ruiz is one of 43 recruits from Class 05-05 of the LAPD Police Academy who will spend the next month patrolling the streets of Downtown L.A., not in a cruiser but on foot. Through December, the rookies will work 22 foot patrols four days a week, concentrating mostly on the Historic Core and Jewelry, Toy and Fashion districts.
"We'll have all these extra bodies," said Central Division Capt. Andy Smith, who lobbied for the new program to come Downtown. "Officers on patrol can prevent a lot of that crime. During this season, it gets real busy for us."
The patrols are part a new effort by Police Chief William Bratton and the LAPD to bolster community-level training of new officers. Recruits will now spend the last four weeks of their seven months in the police academy out on the streets, walking the beat. Each patrol will cover roughly five to 10 blocks.
It's a big change from how training has been handled in the past. Once a recruit graduated from the academy, they were simply sent to a division, where they would job shadow another officer. The on-the-job training period would only last a few weeks, and did little to prepare rookies for working with real people and situations, said Training Division Lieutenant Nick Zingo.
"When they would leave the academy, they'd go into a police car and the only interaction they have with the public is a negative one," said Zingo, who is in charge of the new officers.
The new program, which Zingo said is the first of its type in the nation, gives rookies the chance to see that most people aren't criminals. Too often their perceptions are shaded from the seat of their patrol cars, which they seldom leave, he said.
"This deployment allows them to have contact with business owners, families out shopping, people going on with their lives," said Capt. Rick Jacobs, commanding officer of the Training Division. For the rookies, it gives them a crash course in crime fighting, community interaction and basic, street-level police work.
"They're getting exposure where they put everything they learned in the academy together," Jacobs said, adding that it also helps the communities. "We try to put them in an area where their presence will have an impact on crime."
The beats have already been tried in the Hollywood and Rampart divisions. Smith said he worked to bring it Downtown for the holidays, which he said usually sees a small spike in burglaries during November and December.
Compared to Hollywood, "the [recruits] that come down here will get a little better experience because we've got a huge diversity in population, a diversity in neighborhoods and a diversity in crime," Smith said.
Last Wednesday morning, the group of mostly male recruits met in the second floor squad room of Central Division for their first day on the beat. They were given the lay of the land - the trouble spots, what to do if they run into problems, even where to grab lunch - before being broken into beats, 10 officers in each. After a curt "Yes, sir," they were off.
For the recruits, it's the first time they get to build on the skills they've learned in the academy. Rookie Officer Allen Krish said he is looking forward to learning police work directly from experienced officers, even if it's only for a few weeks. "This is the opportunity to pick their brains," he said. "Instead of just reading it in a book."
While these types of patrols are a recent addition to L.A., police foot beats are not. In fact, they were in place throughout Downtown as recently as 15 years ago.
Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association (CCEA), a business advocacy group for the Industrial and Toy districts, has worked Downtown since the early 1980s and said foot patrols were a staple for years, especially during the holidays.
"Wherever it mattered to the economy of Downtown Los Angeles, you had LAPD and [Department of Transportation officers] directing traffic. That's what we were used to," she said.
But as the LAPD faced cutbacks, the folksy cop-walking-the-beat was reduced and finally eliminated by the 1990s. Since then, a few community groups, including the CCEA, have filled the void by starting their own monthly neighborhood marches. The local business improvement districts also employ security officers.
Although some business leaders said they would rather have veterans on the street, most praised the decision to deploy more officers despite deep budget cuts in the department.
"It's great to have visibility from the police," said Kent Smith, executive director of the Fashion District Business Improvement District (BID), which represents about 600 business owners. "When the holidays come around, the district is so much busier - so many people are shopping and walking through our district. It's something that we've always asked the LAPD to do."
Capt. Andy Smith, meanwhile, said he hopes Downtown will become a regular training ground for rookie officers. "I'd like to see them down here all the time," he said, something that could smooth the way for more permanent officers being assigned to Downtown.
"We have to," he said. "The population is increasing exponentially."
Contact Chris Coates at chris@downtownnews.com.
page 1, 11/21/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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