Brant Hinkle of Internal Affairs Group thought that Compstat might possibly have helped in New York, with its thirty thousand officers, maybe even in Boston, where the chief had served as a street cop. Perhaps it might be a worthwhile tool in many vertical cities where thousands live and work directly on top of others in structures that rise several stories. But that wasn’t the way people lived in the transient, nomadic sprawl of the L.A. basin. Where nobody knew their neighbors’ names. Where people worked and lived close to the ground with access to their cars. Where everyone owned a car, and freeways crisscrossed residential areas as well as business districts. Where only nine thousand cops had to police 467 square miles.
When crime occurred in L.A., the perpetrator could be blocks or miles away before the PSR could even assign a car to take a report. If she could find one. And as far as flooding an area with cops to deal with a crime trend, the LAPD didn’t have half enough cops to flood anything. They could only leak.
There were a few occasions when Brant Hinkle got to see Compstat in action, during the first couple of years after the new chief arrived. That was when the chief, perhaps a bit insecure on the Left Coast, brought in a journalist crony from New York who had never been a police officer and made a special badge for him saying “Bureau Chief.” And gave him a gun permit so he’d have a badge and gun like a real cop. That guy seemed to do no harm, and he was gone now and the chief of police was more acclimated and more secure, but Compstat remained.
Back then the chief had also brought several retired cops from New York, as though trying to re-create New York in L.A. They would put on a little slide show with two or three patrol captains sitting in the hot seat. On a slide would be a picture of an apartment building, and one of the retired NYPD cops with a loud voice and a Bronx accent would confront the LAPD captains and say, “Tell us about the crime problems there.”
And of course, none of the captains had the faintest idea about the crime problems there or even where “there” was. A two-story apartment building? There were hundreds in each division, thousands in some.
And the second-loudest guy, maybe with a Brooklyn accent, would yell in their faces, “Is the burglary that occurred there on Friday afternoon a single burglary or part of a trend?”
And a captain would stammer and sweat and wonder if he should take a guess or pray for an earthquake.
However, Brant Hinkle learned that there were some LAPD officers who loved the Compstat sessions. They were the street cops who happened to hate their captains. They got a glow just hearing about their bosses melting in puddles while these abrasive New Yorkers sprayed saliva. At least that’s how it was described to the cops who wished they could have been there to watch the brass get a taste of the shit they shoveled onto the troops. The street cops would’ve paid for tickets.
As far as the troops at Hollywood Station were concerned, the East Coast chief was not Lord Voldemort, and that alone was an answered prayer. And he did care about reducing crime and response time to calls. And he did more than talk about troop morale; he allowed detectives to take their city cars home when they were on call instead of using their private cars. And of great importance, he instituted the compressed work schedule that Lord Voldemort hated, which allowed LAPD cops to join other local police departments in working four ten-hour shifts a week or three twelve-hour shifts instead of the old eight-to-five. This allowed LAPD cops, most of whom could not afford to live in L.A. and had to drive long distances, the luxury of three or four days at home.
As far as Compstat was concerned, the street cops were philosophical and fatalistic, as they always were about the uncontrollable nature of a cop’s life. One afternoon at roll call, the Oracle, who was old enough and had enough time on the Job to speak the truth when no one else dared, asked the lieutenant rhetorically, “Why doesn’t the brass quit sweating Compstat? It’s just a series of computer-generated pin maps is all it is. Give the chief a little more time to settle down in his new Hollywood digs and go to a few of those Beverly Hills cocktail parties catered by Wolfgang Puck. Wait’ll he gets a good look at all those pumped-up weapons of mass seduction. He’ll get over his East Coast bullshit and go Hollywood like all the clowns at city hall.”
When his transfer came through, Brant Hinkle was overjoyed. He had hoped he would get Hollywood Detectives and had had an informal interview months earlier with their lieutenant in charge. He had also had an informal interview with the boss of Van Nuys Detectives, the division in which he lived, and did the same at West L.A. Detectives, pretty sure that he could get one of them.
When he reported, he was told he’d be working with the robbery teams, at least for now, and was introduced around the squad room. He found that he was acquainted with half a dozen of the detectives and wondered where the rest were. He counted twenty-two people working in their little cubicles on computers or phones, sitting at small metal desks divided only by three-foot barriers of wallboard.
Andi McCrea said to him, “A few of our people are on days off, but this is about it. We’re supposed to have fifty bodies, we have half that many. At one time ten detectives worked auto theft, now there’re two.”
“It’s the same everywhere,” Brant said. “Nobody wants to be a cop these days.”
“Especially LAPD,” Andi said. “You should know why. You just left IA.”
“Not so loud,” he said, finger to lips. “I’d like to keep it from the troops that I did two years on the Burn Squad.”
“Our secret,” Andi said, thinking he had a pretty nice smile and very nice green eyes.
“So where’s my team?” he asked Andi, wondering how old she was, noticing there was no wedding ring.
“Right behind you,” she said. He turned and suffered an enthusiastic Ukrainian handshake from Viktor Chernenko.
“I am not usually a detective of the robbery teams,” Viktor said, “but I am Ukrainian, so now I am a detective of robbery teams because of the hand grenade heist. Please sit and we shall talk about Russian robbers.”
“You’ll enjoy this case,” Andi said, liking Brant’s smile more and more. “Viktor has been very thorough in his investigation.”
“Thank you, Andrea,” Viktor said shyly. “I have tried with all my effort to leave no stone upright.”
The Oracle decided maybe he himself should win honorable mention for the Quiet Desperation Award on that full-moon evening. He had just returned from code 7 and had severe heartburn from two greasy burgers and fries, when the desk officer entered the office and said, “Sarge, I think you need to take this one. A guy’s on the phone and wants to speak to a sergeant.”
“Can’t you find out what it’s about?” the Oracle said, looking in the desk drawer for his antacid tablets.
“He won’t tell me. Says he’s a priest.”
“Oh, crap!” the Oracle said. “Did he say his name is Father William, by any chance?”
“How’d you know?”
“There’s a Hollywood moon. He’ll keep me on the phone for an hour. Okay, I’ll talk to him.”
When the Oracle picked up the phone, he said, “What’s troubling you this time, Father William?”
The caller said, “Sergeant, please send me two strong young officers right away! I need to be arrested, handcuffed, and utterly humiliated! It’s urgent!”
TEN
ON SATURDAY, JUNE 3, Officer Kristina Ripatti of Southwest Division was shot by an ex-con who had just robbed a gas station. Her partner killed the robber but got harassed by homies while he was trying to help the wounded officer, whose spinal injury paralyzed her from the waist down. When Fausto learned that Officer Ripatti, age thirty-three, also had a baby girl, he began to agonize over his partner’s upcoming assignment.