LAPD to Disband Transit Police Units

By Caitlin Liu

April 30, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

One after another, the victims told police they were grabbed from behind by a creepy, gap-toothed guy who tried to drag them away from the Wilshire/Vermont subway station while spewing profanity and threatening sexual assault.

When officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s pickpocket detail heard about the attacks, they were almost certain they knew the suspect: a man they had nicknamed “Toothless” because of his gummy, leering appearance and habit of spouting the same expletives at female bus riders.

With information gathered by the unit’s earlier undercover work, officers arrested Victor Estrada, 37, earlier this month. He is now in jail in lieu of $2-million bail on charges of attempted kidnapping, sexual battery and indecent exposure involving five victims, authorities said.

Despite such success, the pickpocket unit, which also cracks down on sexual predators who prowl the city’s buses, and a separate undercover LAPD transit police anti-graffiti unit are being disbanded. On Thursday, the two units’ 17 members will be reassigned to regular patrol duties as part of an effort to put more officers on city streets.

The decision puzzled some people, especially after LAPD Chief William J. Bratton’s declared war on graffiti and much-heralded “broken windows” policing philosophy -- that cracking down on petty offenses such as vandalism and disorderly conduct helps prevent more serious crimes.

Since its inception three years ago, the six-officer pickpocket unit has arrested about 100 thieves and 170 sexual predators, LAPD officials said. The 11-member Graffiti Habitual Offenders Suppression Team, which began in 1989 and is better known as GHOST, made more than 500 graffiti-related arrests last year.

“I was under the impression that fighting graffiti has become a high priority for the LAPD,” said Tom Weissbarth, president of Sylmar Graffiti Busters, a nonprofit group. Once taggers hear about the demise of GHOST, “they’ll throw a party,” he said.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. David Traum, who worked with the pickpocket unit when he supervised the district attorney’s downtown felony complaints group, said he was impressed by the officers’ professionalism.

“They know the inside and outside of the pickpocket industry,” Traum said. “It’s unfortunate that they’re going to disband it. LAPD’s effectiveness to target pickpockets will be impaired to some extent.”

Although the LAPD lost its transit policing contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority two months ago, officials had planned to keep the two units together to crack down on sexual predators, pickpockets and vandals elsewhere in the city. But plans changed.

“As much as we intended to keep them intact ... right now we need to put them in the street,” said Assistant Chief Sharon Papa. “When violent crimes start spiking and we become the murder capital of the nation, you decide: ‘Let’s saturate the streets with as many officers as possible.’ It was a judgment call.”

Papa said the decision was made by Bratton, who left open the possibility that the units -- particularly GHOST -- might regroup in a few months if the department recruits more new officers and violent crime declines.

Asked about his decision, Bratton seemed surprised, saying he thought “a couple of the specialized units were remaining intact.” But when told the units are disbanding, he said that those specific skills are no longer needed because the LAPD no longer will police transit lines.

Officials at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which won the city’s transit police contract, said some, but not all, of the LAPD’s activities would be continued. To replace the 200 reassigned LAPD transit officers, the sheriff will add 188 deputies and 50 uniformed fare inspectors, said Sheriff’s Capt. Dan Finkelstein, who heads the transit division. The Sheriff’s Department already has a “special-problems unit,” with at least six undercover officers to crack down on crimes like graffiti. But that unit has no plans to focus on pickpockets or sexual predators.

As the LAPD units boxed up files and cleared out offices near Chinatown in Los Angeles, members recalled some of their accomplishments. Last month, the pickpocket unit’s surveillance of a suspected Van Nuys thief led officers to $2.5 million worth of stolen goods, Sgt. Bruce Vermaat said.

The GHOST unit recently caught a graffiti vandal responsible for $47,000 in damage to the Metro Red Line, and officers helped draft a state law to deter vandals, Sgt. Helen Lopez said.

The editor of a graffiti Web site, who asked not to be identified, expressed grudging praise for GHOST.

“It used to be really bad on buses you’d see tags all over. They’ve done a pretty good job of crushing the graffiti out there,” he said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, an LAPD reserve officer, had mixed views.

“You lose that expertise. So there’ll definitely be a loss.”

But, Zine added, disbanding the units is justifiable. “The divisions definitely need personnel that’s citywide.”