Waters Pledges Help at Imperial Courts : Police: Congresswoman tours project where tensions have grown since officers killed resident last month. She calls LAPD sweep Monday ill-timed.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) toured the Imperial Courts housing project Tuesday, pledging support to residents angered by a police sweep the day before that resulted in 44 arrests.

Waters, City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and several community activists deplored the sweep as ill-timed, coming just a month after the controversial shooting by Los Angeles police of a 27-year-old resident of the project, Henry Peco. Peco was shot during a power blackout. Officers said he had pointed a gun at them. No gun was found.

Tensions between police and residents escalated last week after a patrol car ran over a homemade outdoor memorial to the dead man.

As Waters walked through the project Tuesday afternoon, she told residents she wanted to “make sure the police know you are not alone--that we are here with you.”

Trailing close behind were two aides carrying video cameras.

At one point she shouted to a resident, “Have you got enough lights out here? The police need to be watched.” Waters left the video cameras behind so residents could record police activity.

In an earlier telephone interview, Ridley-Thomas, a vocal advocate of reform in the Los Angeles Police Department, said the arrests Monday were ill-conceived.

“The sweep, against the background of the Henry Peco shooting, seems thoughtless to say the least,” he said. “At a time when police work should be making things better, this obviously worsens conditions, which I don’t think was the department’s objective.”

Police have said the arrests at Imperial Courts, most of them on outstanding warrants, were part of a program to cut down on residents of projects in the southeast section of the city celebrating the New Year by shooting guns into the air.

Officers said they held similar sweeps in four nearby housing projects over a three-day period. They said the sites were chosen because they have the heaviest concentration of gunfire in the city on New Year’s Eve.

In addition to the 44 arrests at Imperial Courts, 12 arrests were made in Jordan Downs, said LAPD Deputy Chief Matthew Hunt, and 16 in Nickerson Gardens. A total of five people were taken into custody in Hacienda Village and Avalon Gardens, he added. No guns were confiscated.

As to questions about the timing of the sweep in Imperial Courts, Hunt said, “I guess you could say anytime is a bad time.”

The Rev. Carl Washington, a member of a committee calling for a probe of the Peco shooting, held a news conference at the project before Waters arrived Tuesday and renewed a demand, made last week, that members of the LAPD be barred from patrolling the project and be replaced by city Housing Authority police.

Washington said he had filed a complaint with Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s office, seeking help in obtaining a temporary restraining order to keep the LAPD out of the area. But members of Reiner’s staff said no such complaint had been made.

Asked if the LAPD would agree to residents’ demands and stop patrolling Imperial Courts, Hunt said, “I would hope not.”

“Frankly,” he said, “I think that particular area needs a good deal of police protection. We have a lot of citizens in there who are scared and intimidated by gang members.”

Residents of the project have accused the police of staging the sweep in retaliation for their demand for an independent investigation into the shooting of Peco, who they say was unarmed, and their complaints about the destruction of the memorial.

They also accused officers of searching homes without proper warrants and intimidating residents with threats and slurs.

Hunt said the warrants used to effect the arrests were “all very lawful and very legal.”

Police first reported that 66 arrests were made in Imperial Courts, but revised that to 44.

Allegations that officers engaged in misconduct during the sweep would be investigated, Hunt said.