Earthquake: The Long Road Back : Crime Takes a Holiday--L.A. Arrests Plunge

By JIM NEWTON

Jan. 19, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It is not often that the Los Angeles Police Department boasts about how few people it is arresting.

But in the 24 hours after the Northridge earthquake ripped through Southern California, the LAPD apprehended just 73 people--one of the lowest one-day totals in modern memory. And police officials could not be happier.

“That’s an incredibly small number,” said Police Chief Willie L. Williams. “It would be great if it were like that all the time.”

On an average day--one without a riot, an earthquake or a raging inferno to tamper with the city’s crime statistics--the department arrests about 534 people for all manner of criminal acts. That is eight times as many as it arrested in the day and night after Monday’s quake.

The bulk of those arrested under normal circumstances are charged with relatively minor offenses, but the department apprehended 55,840 suspects last year for so-called Part 1 crimes--murder, rape, robbery and the like. That comes to an average of 152 arrests a day just for those offenses, twice as many as for all crimes combined during the 24 hours after the earthquake.

But where a precipitous drop in arrests usually would cause waves of anxiety at LAPD headquarters, Tuesday’s statistics were a source of pride and relief for the department’s commanders.

“What this speaks to is the tremendous amount of public cooperation and recognition of the seriousness of the problem,” said Cmdr. David J. Gascon, an LAPD spokesman. “We’ve been very grateful for that reaction.”

Other indicators from the 24 hours that followed the early morning quake also suggest that crime took a brief holiday during the earthquake and its aftermath.

Calls for service skyrocketed at first, officials said, but they quieted down by Monday night, and the vast majority were from people with earthquake-related troubles, not from people calling to report crimes in progress. By midnight, police had the situation so well in hand that no callers were holding for 911 operators, a feat rarely accomplished on the calmest Los Angeles evening, much less in the wake of the region’s most devastating earthquake in decades.

“There was a curfew, and people in most of the city were just trying to assess what had occurred,” Williams said. “There were not a lot of people traveling around.”

While public cooperation may be responsible for much of the one-day crime drop, police officials and others said arrest statistics were greatly affected by the dusk-to-dawn curfew and increased staffing by the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Both agencies went on alert and put additional officers on the streets within hours of the quake.

Their combined force was supplemented by 480 National Guard members, who were put to work guarding shopping centers and other retail areas against looting. By dawn Tuesday, looting was so sporadic that the Guard force was trimmed to about 400, officials said.

It was not all good news: The city logged three homicides during the 24 hours after the earthquake, about average for an area that produces more than 1,000 murders a year. Nevertheless, city officials were overjoyed by the dearth of looters and by the general respite from criminal activity.

“Last night, patrols were spectacular,” City Councilman Hal Bernson said at a high-level city staff meeting Tuesday. “It just shows you what a few bucks and a few officers can do.”

Williams, who chaired the meeting, laughed. “Remember that around budget time,” said the chief, who is lobbying for money to hire thousands more police officers in the next few years.

Police acknowledged that the curfew would give them considerable discretion about who to apprehend after dark: Theoretically, anyone without a legitimate work or emergency reason for being on the streets was in violation of the law. Police said they had no intention of arresting everyone they saw, but that meant officers could use their judgment about whom seemed to be a curfew violator.

As night fell Tuesday, Williams announced that the curfew had been successful and would be extended for at least another day.

At an afternoon press conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie Williams said residents who encounter price-gouging should contact police immediately.

Los Angeles police expect to stay on alert for at least several days, working 12-hour shifts and coming in on days off.