GELFAND’S WORLD-It was about 5 p.m. as I entered a local supermarket parking lot. A man was shouting insanely. When I came out of the market about half an hour later, he was still shouting, only more loudly and abusively. I discovered that the shouter was a man sitting in a car near the parking lot entrance. He would look out his window and scream in some incomprehensible way about various dangers and about who was involved in some plot. He seemed seriously deranged. There were a few young people who worked for the market standing next to the front door, and they explained that they had already called the police 20 or 30 minutes earlier. No police came. Welcome to the era of do it yourself policing.
Let me clarify. At one point, a police car did pull into the lot, but it went to the far side and parked next to the Subway shop. One of the market staffers went over and talked to the policeman, and reported back what he had told her: "It's probably a low priority."
We figured out that it was a police car from a different agency, likely from the nearby military housing. To borrow that old line, he didn't want to get involved -- except with his dinner, anyway.
There is a message that the city authorities are sending us in their wordless way. Unless the 911 operator or the police dispatcher decides that your particular call rises to the proper level of urgency, you can forget about getting the police to arrive anytime soon.
There is one other part of this story that you may find strange, but is entirely commonplace. The supermarket staffer who made the 911 call told us that she was asked whether the man had a gun. I don't know how she was supposed to know the answer without confronting the screaming man directly. I can report that I got the same query one time when I called in to report a street fight.
It may seem like a minor point, but it would be less jarring if the 911 operator asked, "Do you know if there are any weapons involved?" Instead, when the operator asks about a specific weapon, there is a momentary urge to explain why you don't know and don't want to get close enough to investigate. After all, that's what the police teach us -- to avoid personal confrontation and call them instead.
It's Catch 22 all over again -- the police usually won't come immediately unless there is a weapon involved, and we don't know if the crazy person has a weapon -- and may soon use it -- unless we act stupidly by approaching him.
What we're coming to learn, at least in this, the most southern part of LAPD territory, is that the sermons and admonitions we get from our Senior Lead Officers clash with the reality of the LAPD's non-responsiveness. We probably shouldn't blame the LAPD as a whole. They can't really help it, being as understaffed as they are. But the fact is that they don't usually show up in a timely manner unless it's a shooting or a stabbing, and that is something that we're coming to understand.
This is the reality of the term I recently borrowed -- You're On Your Own, or YoYo for short. It's likely to be the case if we have a major earthquake, and it's already the case when we witness petty crimes or mentally ill people who are acting out.
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About 35 years ago, the Atlantic published an article called Broken Windows. It's worthy of a separate column by itself, but there is one element of that article that is worthy of mention in this context. The idea is that minor crimes and low level vandalism, if allowed to go unreported and unrepaired, tend to grow on a neighborhood.
That's where the "broken windows" term entered the language, representing the argument that when an abandoned building or car is vandalized, even to the small extent of one broken window, the disease will grow, and soon the building will be gutted and the vandalism will spread to other structures.
In other words, if the authorities ignore a problem just because it is minor, it will have a tendency to grow and to spread. Getting graffiti painted over immediately will tend to prevent future vandalism. We have come to understand that the graffiti problem is cyclic and never-ending, but we've also figured out from long experience that painting it over immediately results in a lower level of chronic abuse.
I think that this argument also applies to police non-responsiveness for petty crimes and non-responsiveness to people acting out in public. After a while, the public begins to say, "What's the use? They won't come." It hasn't devolved to total public apathy in this area, but there is definitely a developing public understanding of the YoYo phenomenon.
Absent a substantial enlargement of LAPD numbers, it may be that there is no complete solution to the problem we observed in the supermarket parking lot the other day. There just aren't enough police in the LAPD to cover the entire 400 square miles in sufficient depth. But there may be some cosmetic changes and some public service changes that could be of benefit.
One involves you and me, the witnesses who are left dangling, waiting for the police to arrive as the minutes and then quarter-hours and then half-hours accumulate. There ought to be some equivalent to the tracking number you get when you call in a complaint to the internet company. There ought to be a way of finding out whether help is coming or not, and if so, how soon.
The process should obviously include creating a new telephone number, apart from 911, that would allow us to inquire as to the status of the complaint.
I realize that this would cost money, but it does provide one tangible advantage. Some people make repeated calls to 911 to ask if the police are coming. Creating a separate follow-up number would free the 911 operators from those repeat calls. The creation of a tracking number that could be ported directly to the witness's smart phone would provide for the feedback process, and in so doing, it would protect 911 for the emergencies that this number was created to service.
Another modest improvement in the 911 system stems from what I mentioned above. It would be less difficult to answer a question phrased along the lines of, "Did you see a weapon such as a gun or a knife?" The follow up to a negative response could be, "Do you think that there might be a weapon?"
Even if some of these changes were to be accomplished, we would still have to admit that we've got a problem in Los Angeles in terms of police response times. I wonder if it would improve relations between the city government and its stakeholders if the authorities just told people the truth. The 911 operators might be authorized to explain to callers that the police are very busy right now and this call is of a low priority.
If the phone company and banks can estimate the amount of time you will have to wait to speak to the next operator, perhaps the City of Los Angeles can at least tell us that the police are not going to be there for an hour or more, and if possible, to settle our own problems.
That last remark was not meant completely in jest. A couple of weeks ago, I was in downtown San Pedro when I saw a man run from his car and pound on the driver's side door of the pickup truck in front of him. He then opened the driver's door and started to yell at the startled driver. It was definitely a volatile situation, with both parties calling 911 and asking for police intervention. The topic of discussion turned out to be equally strange. The owner of the one car thought that the pickup truck had scraped his car and then driven off. The pickup truck driver was not aware that any such collision had happened.
Needless to say, the police did not show up, even after 15 minutes of waiting around. Eventually, some of the bystanders explained to both sides that they might be better off agreeing to call it a draw, and going their separate ways.
And that is exactly what they did. Like I said, it's do it yourself policing in the city of the angels.
Afterword: By now, everyone has heard about actress Danielle Watts being detained and handcuffed by the LAPD for the crime of kissing her boyfriend in public. (If not, please see the story in this CityWatch.) The LAPD explained that it was responding to a 911 call complaining about indecent exposure. Apparently somebody out in the valley considers a kiss to be indecent. The LAPD admits that the claim was unfounded. So let's think about this for a moment. Somebody in Studio City calls 911 about exposed body parts, and the police come roaring up. In San Pedro, some guy is totally flipping out behind the wheel of a car that he may drive off in at any moment. And he is acting like he is out of his mind. Which is the more serious hazard to public safety?
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
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CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 75
Pub: Sep 16, 2014
