Shuffling between black and white squad cars, David Rodriguez swept up leaves and trash in the parking lot of the Hollenbeck police station in Boyle Heights on a recent Friday morning.
Heavily tattooed and wearing the baggy clothes often associated with street gangs, Rodriguez, 30, said he never thought he would work at a police station, let alone be "treated right" by members of the Los Angeles Police Department.
"Every morning I say, 'Good morning' or 'God bless you' to the police officers, and they tell me the same," he said.
But Rodriguez isn't a city employee. He's "doing time" for drunk driving.
The City Terrace resident is one of thousands of Southern Californians who each year pay for their crimes with community service.
A court-ordered penalty, the unpaid labor is performed in place of jail time or as a condition of probation. Most people's familiarity with community service involves hearing that celebrity A or athlete B has been sentenced to it for one transgression or another. Few people, however, know how it works.
The penalty is usually imposed in state or federal courts for nonviolent offenses, such as petty theft or white-collar crime, but it can be used for more serious violations too.
Most criminal justice professionals praise the program, saying it is less costly than incarceration, provides workers for government agencies and nonprofit groups, and is more likely to rehabilitate defendants, especially teens.
But even supporters cite problems. Some say participants fake time sheets to avoid work, or don't show up at all. Judge Stephen Marcus, chairman of the Los Angeles Municipal Courts Alternative Sentencing Program, said community service, although generally effective, needs to be "fine-tuned."
In a 1995 report, Marcus' committee advised judges how to spot phony paperwork from offenders. The committee also put new safeguards in place, requiring special seals and signatures to verify documents.
Those measures helped reduce the problem of fakery, Marcus said, but he believes that there is still some fraud in the system, with offenders lying to the courts.
"It doesn't happen that often, but it violates the integrity of the system," he said.
Lack of government oversight is a systemic flaw. The Los Angeles County Probation Department is supposed to oversee the nonprofit centers that dispense community service work. But the department has almost no resources or personnel to perform that function, said Florence Fujii, the agency's sole employee assigned to monitor the job centers.
