Beefed-Up Freeway Patrols Ordered in Wave of Violence

Authorities on Wednesday announced that officers from all 48 local law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles County have been asked to spend more time patrolling the county’s freeways in hopes of deterring this summer’s rash of motorist-versus-motorist shootings.

The announcement of a beefed-up police presence on the freeways came less than 12 hours after what was possibly the 13th incident in a spate of Southern California highway violence that has left four people dead and two injured since mid-June.

The latest incident involved a 25-year-old Palmdale man who told sheriff’s deputies that he was driving in the fast lane of the Antelope Valley Freeway late Tuesday when a 1974 or 1975 Chevrolet Caprice Classic with three male Latinos began tailgating him. The man, Phillip Toma, said he changed lanes to allow them to pass. When the car drove alongside, the passenger in the right front seat pointed a gun and fired one shot, Toma said.

Toma slammed on the brakes as the gunman fired, and the bullet missed the car, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Merlyn Poppleton. Toma was not injured.

On Wednesday, city, county and state law enforcement officials led by Sheriff Sherman Block, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Lorne C. Kramer and Edward W. Gomez, chief of the California Highway Patrol’s Southern Division, said they have created a loosely formed task force, trying to find plausible explanations or a pattern to the apparently random shootings.

The job promises to be difficult. There have been arrests in only four of the incidents, and there are no known suspects in the other shootings. Gomez noted that two-thirds of the shootings occurred on weekends, at least nine involved handguns and all but one took place between the early afternoon and late evening.

When asked to explain why highway violence has erupted now in Southern California, instead of somewhere else, Block alluded to the commonly held image of the area as the birthplace of bizarre trends and behavior.

“It always starts here,” Block told reporters during a news conference at the Hall of Justice downtown.

More Guns

He speculated that inadequacies in dealing with the mentally ill, increasing numbers of guns and an abundance of narcotics on the street may all partially explain the outbreak of violence. Intense media attention on the incidents may also be prompting publicity-hungry “copycats” to commit shootings, he said.

To stem the violence, participating police departments in Los Angeles County, as well as the Sheriff’s Department, have agreed to let their officers spend more time on the county’s nearly 600 miles of highways, normally the domain of CHP officers, authorities said. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, has instructed its 317 motorcycle officers to take the highways to and from home and whenever else possible.

“People need to realize it’s not a (California) Highway Patrol problem, it’s not a sheriff’s problem, but a community problem,” observed Signal Hill Police Chief Michael McCrary, president of the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn.

Compare Notes

Under the task force formed to review the shootings, investigators from separate agencies will not meet regularly under one roof, at least not initially, authorities said. Rather, detectives will compare notes by telephone and then forward their reports to the CHP, which will act as a “central repository” for any information relating to highway violence.

CHP officers have been directed to spend as much time as possible parked at highly visible locations along the freeways “to be readily available to act as receptors of information” from motorists about violence that the drivers may have just witnessed, Gomez said. The CHP has also set up a special telephone hot line--(213) 736-3303--to field information from highway tipsters, Gomez said.

He stressed, however, that people should use the 911 emergency number as soon as possible if they witness any violence and cannot find a CHP officer nearby.

Not New

Block said he believes that while highway killings may be a new phenomenon in Southern California, freeway violence is not.

“I think many people probably have heard or wondered about (a possible shooting) in the past, but didn’t bother to report it,” Block said. “Now, with reports of people actually being killed or injured, I believe people who are suspicious of an incident are more quick to report it.”

Meanwhile, in a related development Wednesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre proposed that the council’s Police, Fire and Public Safety Committee hold hearings to consider the formation of yet another task force to study the issue of freeway violence.

Made up of law enforcement officials and mental health experts, City Hall’s task force would consider, among other topics, the establishment of a “freeway watch” program similar to Neighborhood Watch, Alatorre said.

CHP officials said they were being deluged by calls from frightened motorists, including complaints they strongly suspect are groundless.

For example, a caller said he had been driving a tow truck at 2:45 p.m. on the eastbound Ventura Freeway near the Balboa Boulevard exit when someone shot at his fender from a Silver Toyota pick-up.

However, when CHP officers investigated, they found no victims or signs of bullets.

“It was just a potshot that didn’t hit anything,” CHP spokesman Thomas Coleman said. “The man just wanted to report it.”

Promised to Call

The tow truck driver, who did not give his name, promised to call back to file a report, but he never did, investigators said.

Not all of the more than 100 callers that contacted the CHP dispatch office Wednesday were reporting shots fired. Some of the callers simply expressed fear of being shot at or reported someone tailgating them. Other calls were false alarms entirely, Coleman said.

“People are just really jumping the gun,” Coleman said.

CHP Officer Bruce Turner said that the phoned reports of shootings have risen dramatically since Saturday. He said he received about 50 calls Wednesday, an increase of about 100% over the usual load.

Turner said one of the calls, involving a gun-toting passenger in a car on the Santa Monica Freeway, later turned out to be an 8-year-old boy with a toy Uzi squirt gun.

Guns Drawn

Five CHP units responded with guns drawn and temporarily closed the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway and the northbound Golden State Freeway interchange while talking with the parties involved, Coleman said.

The boy, who was riding with his mother and another male passenger, pointed the toy gun at a passing motorist who turned out to be a security guard, Turner said.

“This little kid pointed a gun out the window and began to pull the trigger,” the officer said. “The gun looked like a real gun, except something shiny on it made the guy wonder if it was a toy gun.

“As a security guard, he had a gun himself. He said if he hadn’t noticed the gun wasn’t real, he would have shot the kid. He didn’t even realize it was a kid at first.”

Coleman said officers “advised the boy that it was not polite to point guns at people on the freeway and told the mother to put the gun in the trunk while on the road.”

Turner said the spate of shootings has prompted people not only to grow fearful but to exaggerate lesser traffic-related confrontations.

“There can’t be that many people out there shooting, there’s just no way,” he said. “My partner had a call from a lady. When he asked if there was a gun involved, she said no. Then later she said, ‘Yeah, I think there was a gun.’ Everybody can’t be telling the truth.”