Re “Police Union Claim: ‘Crime Is up, and It Is Pedersen’s Fault”
[Editor’s Note: In seeking to bring a condemnatory case against Police Chief Don Pedersen, whom board members of the police union want fire, the union posted the following long awaited 2,255-word release today on its website. The union has been silent since July 21 when it issued its first Ouster Campaign press release, listing alleged failures of the fifth-year chief. The thrust of their charge is that since Culver City suffered three more robberies than Santa Monica last month and four more than Burbank, it is irrefutable evidence of weak leadership from the chief’s office.]
Police Chief’s Failure to Address Violent Crime Threatens Safety in Culver City Culver City Chief of Police Don Pedersen’s poor leadership is threatening community safety by limiting the city’s police officers’ ability to combat a rising level of violent crime. Pedersen, who this summer was the subject of a Vote of No-Confidence by 86.5 percent of the department’s officers and sergeants, continues to fight his own rank-and-file, who are seeking his removal from office. Pedersen’s dishonesty and his lack of integrity and accountability were the subjects of a previous press release (read it at www.culvercitypolice.com).
A recent survey conducted by the Culver City Police Officers Assn. (CCPOA), which represents the department’s officers and sergeants, revealed that more people have been the victims of robberies in Culver City than in most other local cities, either our size or larger.[i] Robbery – Section 211 of the California Penal Code – is a violent crime against a person, whereby a criminal uses physical force or fear, often using a weapon, to steal property from another. Because many robbery suspects are armed, often addicted to illegal drugs, and are frequently violent gang members, the potential for injury or death is always present.
Culver City – a community of 5.1 square miles with a population of 40,722 residents – is currently policed by 104 full-time police officers (three below our newly reduced authorized strength of 107). Last month – August 2010 – was a fairly average month, in which twelve robberies were reported to the Culver City Police Dept. Suspects used weapons in half of these robberies (five guns and one knife). Suspects in the remaining six robberies used either physical force or threats of force.
Chief Pedersen didn’t seem overly concerned by this level of violent crime and urged the CCPOA board to compare Culver City’s crime statistics with those of neighboring cities. We took the chief’s advice, and here are our findings:
Beverly Hills – a city of 5.7 square miles with a population of 36,224 has an authorized strength of 134 police officers (thirty more than the CCPD) – had only two reported robberies during the month of August.
Santa Monica – a city of 8.3 square miles with a population of 92,703 and an authorized strength of 199 police officers – had nine reported robberies in August. Culver City had three more robberies than its neighboring municipality, which has more than twice our population, roughly sixty percent more landmass, and is policed by almost twice the number of officers.
Gardena – with 5.3 square miles, a population of 61,927, and a designated strength of 115 police officers – had fourteen reported robberies in August. Despite having 20,000 additional residents and a significant indigenous street gang population, Gardena had only two more robberies than Culver City.
Torrance – with 20.5 square miles, a population of 144,717, and 229 police officers had five reported robberies in August.
The city of Burbank is similar to Culver City because of its commercial and residential mix, which is anchored by major film and television studios. Burbank – a city of 17.3 square miles with a population of 108,469, and a designated strength of 154 officers – had eight reported robberies during the month of August. In this example, Culver City had thirty-three percent more robberies than a city with more than three times its landmass, two-and-one-half times its population, and with fifty more police officers.
Pasadena – a city of 23.0 square miles, a population of 151,576, and an authorized strength of 227 police officers – had twenty reported robberies in August, five of which were armed robberies. Despite having four times the landmass, three-and-one-half times as many residents, and a significant indigenous gang population, Pasadena had only eight more robberies than Culver City.
The city of Glendale, which occupies an area of 30.6 square miles, has a population of almost 200,000, and an authorized strength of 246 police officers, had eleven reported robberies during the month of August. Culver City had one more robbery than this city, which has six times its landmass, five times its population, and is policed by 142 additional police officers.
The Orange County city of Huntington Beach, a regional recreational destination, has 26.39 square miles, a population of 200,763, and 237 police officers. Huntington Beach had six reported robberies in August, which is six less than Culver City.
Montebello, east of downtown Los Angeles, is 8.3 square miles with a population of 65,781 and 79 police officers. In the month of August, Montebello had ten robberies, two less than Culver City.
Weak Leadership Equals More Crime
Chief Pedersen has reduced the strength of the department’s patrol force to an unsafe level to please his City Council bosses with a perception of him as a cost cutter, this at a time of increased demand for police services due to growth in the city. Pedersen has also attempted to reverse the department’s culture of pro-active policing – which seeks to preempt crime by arresting individuals before they victimize our citizens – with his efforts to turn the organization into a reactive force that mainly takes crime reports after the fact.
In less than a decade, the Culver City Police Dept. has been reduced from 128 sworn officers to its current authorized strength of 107, although we’re currently at 104 due to three positions being unfilled. As recently as April of this year the department was authorized for 110 officers. Chief Pedersen, however, refused to hire recruits to fill six vacancies, even thought there was a certified eligibility list in place. The CCPOA board of directors met with Pedersen on April 20 and asked why we were not hiring police recruits. The chief told us that the then-Interim City Manager, Lamont Ewell, had imposed a citywide hiring freeze. This was not true, as we later learned public safety positions were exempt from the hiring freeze. In fact, the Human Resources Dept. announced openings for city lifeguards later that week. Since then, Pedersen has eliminated three more police officer positions in response to Ewell’s call for citywide budget cuts.
At a time when calls for police service have dramatically increased due to commercial business expansion – and soon to escalate dangerously with the planned opening of the light rail line, which will terminate in Culver City, bringing thousands of daily visitors from downtown and South Los Angeles – the Police Dept. frequently fields as few as four officers on the day shift.
Historically the heaviest in call volume, Day Watch has been reduced by about fifty percent in strength under Pedersen’s direction. In the April 20 meeting, Pedersen told the CCPOA Board, “I don’t feel guilty at all fielding four ‘L’ cars [single officer units] on Day Watch.” The chief’s opinion didn’t change when a board member reminded him that less than a week prior to the meeting, there was an armed take-over robbery of the Ralphs Market in Raintree Plaza, in which four suspects entered the store, all armed with handguns (Incident #10-12468).
According to Chief Pedersen’s staffing formula, in the above-mentioned crime – excluding any possible layoff vehicles, getaway drivers, or other counter surveillance that any moderately sophisticated robbery crew would employ – this would leave us with four armed suspects against four armed officers. And that assumes all four “L” cars are available and make it to the scene, and are not tied up with in-custody shoplifters at the Westfield Mall. Numerical parity with armed suspects is not an acceptable situation. Numerical superiority combined with safe tactical planning is the only safe means to handle this type of situation.
While in the April 20 meeting, CCPOA Vice President, Sergeant Fitzpatrick asked Chief Pedersen if the department could use some of the savings from the six unfilled (already budgeted) police officer positions to fund an emergency overtime list, to bolster our understaffed patrol shifts, at least until we were able to hire more police officers. Pedersen – who had previously cut the department’s overtime budget by $100,000 – rejected the idea, asserting the city hiring freeze (which didn’t apply to public safety positions) prevented him from tapping that fund for emergency overtime.
In a desperate attempt to find solutions for a problem that placed Culver City’s citizens and police officers at risk, the CCPOA Board asked Chief Pedersen if he, as the department head, would go to the Interim City Manager, explain the safety concerns and the emergency need to use some of that budgeted salary money for overtime. The chief refused out of hand, but suggested that it would be appropriate for the CCPOA Board to meet with the Interim City Manager for that purpose. It was unclear why Pedersen felt it would be appropriate for the CCPOA Board to provide the necessary leadership to ensure a safe living and working environment for our residents, business people, and officers, and why it was inappropriate for the chief of police to provide such leadership.
Another disappointing revelation is that Chief Pedersen, in attempting to justify his intentional understaffing, has tried to link the number of officers in the department with the population of our city, stating that we have a higher ratio of officers to residents than most agencies. What Chief Pedersen doesn’t want people to know is, we apparently have more crime, too. That formula – which Pedersen undoubtedly learned in some management school – was intended for large agencies like the LAPD or NYPD, but has no application to our situation in Culver City.
Culver City is an island, surrounded predominately by city of Los Angeles neighborhoods with significant gang populations and crime rates. An estimated eighty-five percent of criminals arrested by the Culver City Police Dept. are non-residents. Furthermore, according to a recent press release issued by Culver City Fire Chief Christopher Sellers (which Chief Pedersen forwarded to Police Dept. members) Culver City’s public safety agencies serve a daytime population of 200,000 people, not just the 40,000 people who sleep here at night. An earlier Police Dept. estimate placed the daytime policing population at 350,000.
What Chief Pedersen apparently doesn’t understand is, no matter how you interpret the numbers, we have more violent crime than most cities our size. Although only five square miles in area, the geography of our city – with long narrow corridors and widely dispersed pockets of city territory – our response times and distances are typically long, and even more so during peak traffic hours. If you have an intruder in your home near Washington Boulevard and Centinela Avenue, do you feel comfortable waiting for the nearest available “L car” (single officer unit) responding from Washington Boulevard near La Cienega Boulevard – over four miles away – in daytime or rush hour traffic? With our current deployment levels, a similar situation is a distinct possibility.
Making matters worse, we have yet to mention Chief Pedersen’s attempts to shift the Police Dept.’s organizational culture from our traditional style of pro-active, officer-initiated arrests of those entering our city with criminal intent, to a more reactive style of policing in which officers mainly wait to answer report calls and investigate crimes after they have already been committed. Pedersen prefers the latter style because it reduces the number of complaints from the public. Unfortunately, strong leadership requires a willingness to stand up to criticism for the good of those we are sworn to protect.
Not to be misunderstood, we in the CCPOA believe that complaints from the public should be thoroughly investigated, and if officers are found to have acted improperly they should be disciplined. But Chief Pedersen has attempted to steer the department away from pro-active policing – a legal and recognized law enforcement tool, proven to be effective at protecting the community from dangerous criminals – simply to avoid controversy. In essence, instead of doing the right thing for the citizens of Culver City, Chief Pedersen continues to promote a far less effective approach of achieving community safety, because it’s less likely to expose him personally to criticism or potential civil liability. Details on Chief Pedersen’s attempts to reduce pro-active police work in Culver City will be included in a future CCPOA press release.
Culver City is an extremely desirable community in which to live or locate a business. Over the years, the police department has provided the safe environment and quality of life that attract potential residents and businesses. This perception, and the reality of community safety have enabled Culver City’s gentrification, cultural renaissance, and high property values. It’s made Culver City a wonderful place to raise a family. Culver City’s expanded commercial businesses, restaurants, art galleries and entertainment venues have transformed it into a destination city. This fact, along with the nearly completed light rail line will continue to place increased demands and expectations on law enforcement.
Culver City’s residents and business people deserve a police chief who is strong, honest and unafraid. Chief Pedersen has failed in all three categories. This is the reason why 86.5 percent of the department’s officers and sergeants have voted “No Confidence” in Pedersen as their chief of police. For the safety and continued high quality of life of the Culver City community, the Culver City Police Officers Assn. hopes that interested citizens will contact their city council members and City Manager John Nachbar at 310.253.6000 to express their concerns. Concerned citizens may also contact Mr. Nachbar or individual Council members,
