Los Angeles Police Department officers accustomed to tracking 911 calls and patrolling the city’s streets in the wake of the Palisades fire suddenly found themselves tasked with an unfamiliar but crucial role. I noticed. They are rescue workers, night watchmen and comrades to firefighters fighting one of the most devastating fires. in the history of the region.
Across the country, police have been tasked with responding to wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes for decades. Some experts predict that law enforcement will increasingly face new climate-related challenges, and Los Angeles Police Department officers learned about them firsthand last week.
The Los Angeles Police Department is grappling with how and when to enforce evacuation orders and how to carry out its normal duties of investigating crimes while understaffed.
About 750 police officers are deployed to the scene of the fire, and the crisis has strained a force that is already well below what leaders say is optimal staffing levels due to long-standing problems with turnover and recruitment. There is.
Each of LAPD’s 21 patrol divisions is expected to send additional units, including patrol officers, supervisors and detectives, to the front lines of firefighting. As a result, most low-level calls, such as robberies or other incidents where the suspect is already at large, are not responded to immediately.
Los Angeles police officials are under pressure to focus on opportunistic thieves who are suspected of taking advantage of the chaos to break into the homes of people fleeing the fires.
Earlier this week, prosecutors charged nine people with looting in fire-ravaged areas of Palisades and Eaton, including three accused of stealing $200,000 worth of valuables from a Mandeville Canyon home. It also included people. Separately, another man was also charged with intentionally starting a fire at Azusa Park.
Pacific Palisades officials who police the boundaries of the evacuation zone are facing intense criticism from disgruntled residents who want to return to their homes. Local council offices and social media have been flooded with complaints about inaccurate information and inconsistent enforcement by police.
During one of officials’ daily briefings on Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the department continues to increase patrols in the area to ward off would-be robbers. He also asked for patience and “continued cooperation” from those evacuated by the fire.
“We understand your frustration and desire to see your home in person, but until Cal Fire tells us the affected area is safe for repopulation, we will continue to support you,” McDonnell said. We cannot allow them to return.”
The department has received reinforcements from Los Angeles International Airport and Port Police, as well as about 200 National Guard troops. According to the police chief, authorities arrested 14 people on various charges including violating curfew, impersonating a firefighter, drunk driving and robbery. Police also investigated 34 missing person reports. Twenty of them were found alive, and several others were among the victims of the Palisades fire.
Firefighters have contained about 19% of the fire, which has burned 23,713 acres and destroyed nearly 1,300 buildings. Officials confirmed that at least nine people were killed in the fire.
Among the victims were Los Angeles Police Department officers. According to a department-wide memo distributed last week, 19 police homes were destroyed and 11 more were damaged by the fire.
The department is part of a just-announced state and federal task force to combat wildfire-related crimes such as home invasions, arson and flying drones in restricted airspace. These efforts and disaster-related policing are likely to become more commonplace, according to new findings from researchers studying the effects of climate change.
After Hurricane Katrina, several police officers were convicted of killing unarmed civilians during the post-hurricane chaos, forcing the city of New Orleans to pay millions of dollars in settlements. Since then, U.S. law enforcement agencies have begun more aggressive training. Experts said they were preparing for a disaster scenario.
Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said law enforcement agencies across the country have been keeping an eye on the LAPD’s performance in recent days.
“Los Angeles should be a wake-up call for everyone, whether you believe climate change is to blame or not,” he said.
In a paper published in the journal Policing in 2023, two Dutch researchers say that rising global temperatures and extreme weather events are already having a dramatic impact on policing, and likely will continue to have a dramatic impact on policing. The conclusion is that it will continue to have an impact in some way.
One of the authors, Anna Matiszak, a criminologist and senior lecturer at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, said that further climate change would “significantly influence and change the crime and victimization landscape at all possible levels”, adding that it would That could mean anything from an increase in rates, he said. From domestic violence to theft of valuable resources and disaster supplies.
“There are normal crimes, but then all of a sudden you have what we call survival crimes, because people are deprived of their basic needs,” Matiszak said.
Associate Professor Sylvia Berg, another author of the paper, said some police forces around the world are starting to develop climate-aware strategies, analyzing weather data to determine when and where crime hot spots appear. He says he is trying to predict.
Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Donald “Donnie” Graham said police already play an important role in the city’s disaster response, even if some critics don’t want to admit it.
“It’s the police officers who are stopping people from trespassing into the area to make sure they don’t fall prey to people during the darkest hours,” he said as he drove to the city’s emergency response center.
He defended how police officers acted during recent fires, pointing out that false alerts about evacuations and other contradictory information circulating online make everyone’s job difficult. did.
“Chaos is chaos,” Graham said.
A Santa Monica woman whose home was burglarized early Wednesday morning was hoping that an Apple AirTag among the stolen items would help investigators track her whereabouts. But authorities told the woman, a lawyer named Vicki, that they “didn’t have enough resources.”
The woman, who asked that her last name not be used due to safety concerns, said her family’s home was just outside the mandatory evacuation zone set for Santa Monica on Tuesday as the Palisades Fire burned south. Ta. She and her family decided to leave the property in two cars and head for a safer environment. The house was empty by about 11 p.m.
A man entered the property around 2:30 a.m., Vicki said, and shared surveillance video with the Times. In it, the robber, wearing a black hoodie and backpack, appears to kick in a wooden front door and then make off with valuables, including designer shoes and a collection of Taiwanese whiskey.
“They completely dumped our house,” she said.
When the robbers left the home just after 3 a.m., they fled with a duffel bag containing an Apple AirTag. Vicki said she and her husband contacted the Santa Monica Police Department, which then contacted the Los Angeles Police Department, who began an investigation after it became clear that the air tags were being transmitted within Los Angeles.
Vicki said LAPD tracked the AirTag to an apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, but they were “unable to pinpoint” its location and did not enter the premises. The AirTag was then moved to another nearby facility where it remained for several days.
Vicki said she followed up with Santa Monica police and was told they didn’t have enough resources to investigate because of the fire. She knows the fire is everyone’s biggest concern, but she worries that time is running out to solve the crime.
“If we can find them, we can solve the robbery,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
“Under normal circumstances,” detectives use air tags and other equipment to track stolen items found by their owners, Santa Monica Police Department spokeswoman Lt. Erica Akulfi said in a statement. He said that it is not always possible to pinpoint a location or provide sufficient evidence. to be arrested.
“We remain deeply involved in a highly unusual emergency situation during which nothing has been maintained,” Akulfi said in a statement. “All law enforcement officers, including those assigned to the investigation, “I had to put my normal duties aside and attend to staff duties.” I’m in the Santa Monica evacuation zone. ”
The statement said that while fighting the fire remains the top priority, Vicki’s air tag case remains unresolved.
“The investigation is not yet complete,” Santa Monica Police said. “And as we move forward and move closer to normalcy, our investigative division will continue to work with the Los Angeles Police Department on appropriate follow-up investigations as time and resources allow.”
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
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