"To Protect and To Serve ... and To Listen"
by Everett Littlefield

Sometimes it's easy to figure out why the community doesn't feel included.

Here's a case in point.

I recently read over an old LA Times (May 6, 2002) and came across an article written by USC and UCLA Professors, Wellford (Buzz) W. Wilms, Warren H. Schmidt and Alex Norman entitled "The Top Priority: Community Policing."

At the end of the article, it stated that these colleagues had conducted a study of LAPD community policing between 1995 and 2001 and that a report would be released soon.

The article stated in part " … that if police and residents could work together around a common interests, misperceptions and misunderstandings would break down and crime problems could be solved before they came statistics."

I contacted Professor Buzz Wilms, who confirmed the report had been written and presented to the LAPD saying, " ... we finished the report for Chief Bratton and the Commission and presented it last December to the LAPD command officers. The Chief publicly described the report as where he wants to lead the Department."

Buzz sent me both an Executive Summary (8 pages) and the complete 150 page Research Report, fully footnoted and annotated with references. Both are well worth reading.

It is good to know that Rick Caruso, Chair of the Police Commission, and Chief Bratton are both committed to community policing ... but the report was intended for use by citizens as well and, except for a single press release announcing it's existence, it never got out to the residents.

I suggest we do that for them.

Let's post the shorter Executive Summary on as a webpage on LACP.org so that anyone who wants to can see it.

Then let's offer a link to the Complete 150 page LAPD Research Report, a PDF file which is available on the UCLA website.

By the way, Professor Wellford (Buzz) W. Wilms says he invites anyone who wishes to contact him with questions and comments to feel free to do so: