Compton’s Badge of Honor
The vote is in: there will be a new Compton Police Department. It will be better and more efficiently run than the previous department, according to those in the know.
By Yussuf J. Simmonds
Sentinel Managing Editor
When the Compton City Council voted to re-establish the city’s police department by a three to two vote, it was a decision that was literally borne out of the will of the people through their representatives. With Mayor Eric Perrodin casting the deciding vote, the ‘new’ Compton Police Department will only have the same name as the old one. According to the Mayor, “This vote is about improving the quality of life for all citizens of Compton. I’ve always said that if we can afford it, we should move toward owning our own police department. I made that pledge as a mayoral candidate, and tonight I am proud to deliver on my promise.” The ‘new’ Compton PD will indeed be a new organization, with a new structure and a new mandate from the people.
City Manager Charles Evans said, “We had four town hall meetings put on by the city and we had them at place in each district and I think they went very well. One of the things we discussed and looked at is community-based policing as a model, and it was more advantageous for this community to have local control over its resources. The city has been examining all of its resources especially in these tough economic times and trying to make a determination about the most effective and efficient way to move forward here in this community.”
As the individual who runs the day-to-day operation of the city–Compton’s CEO–Evans is in the best position to understand the needs of the community. He literally has the pulse of the community at his fingertips. “We’ve passed $150 million worth of bonds; we’re going to have infrastructure and commercial projects; we have housing projects being developed; so, what is the best way to handle the growth we’re going to have in this community in these tight economic times?” he said rhetorically.
“One of the things we looked at was how to control costs and effectively how we manage costs. When we look at police services, we determined, based on the feasibility study conducted by Joseph Rouzan, that the best way to handle that cost was to have our own police agency. Right now, we contract with the county sheriff and we looked at their costs, which on the average, have increased–somewhere between five to seven percent per year–and we said … well based on our economy, we don’t feel it’s prudent to increase cost at that rate.”
He concluded that without a doubt, Compton having its own police department, would be more economically feasible for the city.
In 2008, when Compton was considering re-establishing its police department, the city reached to Joseph T. Rouzan, Jr., a former chief of Compton Police Department and an authority on law enforcement, to examine the feasibility of establishing a new and improved police department. He told the Sentinel, “My calculations indicate that it would be about as reasonable as what they (Compton officials) are doing with the sheriff (department), if not less.” As one who knows the previous department, Rouzan said, “the question is, ‘why was the department disbanded?’ There was a lot of rumors about corruption and the police was doing a poor job, but no police officer was indicted or prosecuted. So why they were disbanded, I don’t know. I guess it may have been for a cost factor; but now the cost keeps rising.”
Like the city manager, Rouzan focused heavily on the economic factor as the main reason for the change stressing home rule–the ability for an entity (municipality) to govern itself.
Lestean Johnson, president of the Compton Chamber of Commerce was a part of the non-official body that helped in creating the new police department. She was forthright immediately saying, “We’re instituting a new Compton Police Department; I don’t like to say bringing it back because we’re instituting a new one. I was one of the group that traveled to Citrus Heights and looked at their model that was very similar to Compton and I was very elated. My city officials were looking forward to re-instituting a new Compton Police Department and I think it’s a great opportunity, and I think that the time is right, and I am elated that they are moving forward with it.”
Joseph Lewis represented the citizens as the vice president of the Concerned Citizens of Compton (CCC), a social activist organization and it has nothing to do with the city except that “we’re all residents.” He also went to Citrus Heights to observe the model, which helped in their decision-making process. In responding to why Citrus Heights was picked, he replied, “Citrus Heights was picked because it had the same issues (as Compton) as it related with the sheriff providing the services. The sheriff services were so expensive and continuing to grow.”
“The CCC is a large organization; we have a lot of people and we deal with some of the political decisions in the city, with some of the community issues in the city, and we also have the ability to call politicians, city representatives and personnel to explain why certain conditions exist in our city, and they show up,” Lewis continued.
About the soundness of the new police department, he said, “I believe it’s good and I’ll tell you why. For years the citizens have been complaining how the sheriff treats the citizens of Compton. They come to the city council meetings and complain how the sheriff has been disrespecting them, and is not sensitive to the community. In addition, the sheriff could not be held accountable for their actions here in the city. We would actually have to go to the Board of Supervisors to make any big complaint and we had no control over the costs.”
Lewis believed that the new Compton PD would be like a breath of fresh air and would return a sense of local pride absent since the local department was shuttered.
According to the sheriff’s department, they work for the people of Compton, and if this (their own police department) is what they want, then we’ll be happy for them. The only thing the sheriff’s department wants to know is what will the transition plan be like.
