Police Patrols

Faces peek out through the wire mesh in the green trucks that rumble through the morning. They are not prisoners, but they seem so. A back door opens and they drop out one by one in their black uniforms, scuffed shoes and clumsily tilted berets. Their rifles clatter, they are on the beat. They yawn and stretch and meander through the neighborhood, a trickling dark sea beneath the jacaranda and magnolia.

The Santa Monica Police Department on Sunday launched a revamped method of patrolling the beach-side city, a community-oriented approach that assigns officers to a particular beat for a longer period of time and reshapes decades-old beat boundaries. Under the plan, the 8.5-square-mile city of about 88,000 has been divided into eight areas with nine or 10 officers assigned to each, said Lt. Clinton Muir, the program's manager.

The cops wave over the sleek black Trans Am outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and the young man behind the wheel looks startled. No wonder. He's been nabbed for tinted windows and no front license plate -- small stuff for a bustling Saturday night in Hollywood -- and a Los Angeles Police Department patrol officer is writing him a ticket. A second uniformed officer watches his partner's back, and a third stands guard nearby on the star-studded sidewalk.

Five shootings that left two dead and eight wounded in the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday night appear to be unrelated, Los Angeles Police Department officials said Wednesday. Still, top LAPD commanders said they were moving quickly to prevent further outbreaks of violence in the area by deploying dozens of additional officers. The shootings, over a four-hour period, were unusual for the Valley. Much of the violence appeared to be gang-related, according to LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore.

"Speeding, speeding, speeding." Those are the top three traffic violations Deputy John Young has been ticketing in his five years as a motorcycle officer for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, Malibu division. But on July 1, when the new hands-free cellphone law goes into effect, talking and/or texting may nudge their way onto that list. I caught up with Young, 43, to chat about his beat patrolling one of Southern California's most beloved routes, the Pacific Coast Highway.

Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke said Wednesday that she will dedicate $331,000 in funds to increase police patrols at swimming pools in her district this summer. The money will help maintain patrols by eight L.A. County police officers. Last month, a band of young men overcame two armed guards and six pool workers at the 109th Street Swimming Pool in Watts. -- Jill Leovy

An Oxnard police officer who ran over and killed a female sunbather while on beach patrol in an SUV will not face criminal charges, though the accident is a "great tragedy," the Ventura County district attorney's office said Wednesday. Senior Officer Frank Brisslinger drove a Chevy Tahoe directly over Cindy Conolly, 49, as she lay on Mandalay Beach last June. But prosecutors cannot prove that he was driving negligently at the time of the incident, according to a 54-page report released by Dist.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy David Rodriguez peered suspiciously at half a dozen suspected gang members loitering at Compton's Kelly Park. He thought they probably had drugs or weapons. He slowed his patrol car to a crawl on Pauline Street but drove past the park. Like most deputies in Compton, Rodriguez works alone. And he learned early on that there are situations to avoid without a partner. "You have to be a little more selective.

The city's beleaguered police chief, acknowledging that police alone cannot quell a run of deadly violence, on Thursday called on 10,000 men to patrol the streets. Sylvester Johnson, who is black, said that black men in particular had a duty to protect residents. Philadelphia, the nation's sixth-largest city, has nearly 1.5 million residents, 44% of them black. It has recorded 294 homicides this year, most of them involving black men.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used to brace for trouble each time they pulled into a cluster of apartment buildings on South Grandee Avenue near the Compton airport. It's a cul-de-sac where they could be easily cornered by gang members But on a recent Friday night, deputies Jose Sandoval and Larry Waldie spotted only a few teenage girls who didn't appear to be causing trouble. There were no gang members in sight.