Los Angeles Police Department resources
The LAPD's organization is complex with the department divided into bureaus and offices that oversee functions and manage specialized units.
The following is a list of LAPD community stations (patrol divisions), along with their original division numbers:[1] The Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor is one of the LAPD's three primary patrol sedans, the other two being the Dodge Charger Pursuit and the Ford Police Interceptor Sedan.
The LAPD also uses a small number of Chevrolet Tahoe PPVs, though they are gradually decommissioning them due to their poor gas mileage.
Options available from Ford ordered by the LAPD today include dual pillar-mounted Unity spotlights, 16-inch heavy duty steel wheels with chrome center caps, and ballistic panels within the two front doors.
On the rear side panel is a black and white sticker that reads "EMERGENCY DIAL 9-1-1 Fire Police Medical."
These differentiate from traditional unmarked cruisers due to their prevalence among regular civilian traffic and their lack of police equipment.
The bomb squad also operated a custom Peterbilt 367 with a Total Containment Vessel until June 2021, when it was destroyed after illegal fireworks accidentally detonated while being stored in the truck.
[3] The LAPD uses various trucks, including a Peterbilt used to move a mobile command center trailer, and several retired military flatbeds acquired from the 1033 Program.
On September 11, 2015, the Mayor of Los Angeles announced a plan to lease 160 battery electric vehicles and 128 plug-in hybrids for city department use.
[11] A specially-marked 2001 Ford Crown Victoria with an older Federal Signal Aerodynic lightbar (used by the LAPD in the 1980s and 1990s) is used by officers assigned to patrol Panorama Mall; despite its visible age, it is still in service as of November 2020.
The Air Support Division operates from LAPD Hooper Heliport in downtown Los Angeles, and Van Nuys Airport.
Two officers with at least three years of patrol car service fly in each air unit; they are armed and able to land and make arrests in areas not accessible by other means.
Air units do not fly during poor or inclement weather (particularly dense fog) due to aviation safety procedures.
Bicycle units train rigorously in the hills of Elysian Park near Academy Road and Dodger Stadium.
Inspired by a contest in 1924, Police Chief R. Lee Heath ordered his staff to investigate the use of radio communications to "more quickly dispatch officers to where they are needed."
Other frequencies are also used for varying divisions and purposes, such as WPLQ343 for talkaround (direct unit-to-unit communications), WPRJ338 for detectives, and WIL868 for tactical operations.
Upon receiving the call for service, the Radio Telephone Operator (RTO) will go on the air to broadcast to the division (with the option to simulcast on bureau-wide, geographically adjacent or citywide frequencies).
A fictitious example of an LAPD dispatch radio transmission would be:Any available Central unit, a 211 just occurred at 714 South Broadway Street.
Incident number 171 in RD 193.Without using jargon, this radio transmission reports an armed robbery at 714 South Broadway Street, followed by the suspect's physical description, vehicle description, and weapon, an order to read information in the MDT, and a request for the responding units to identify themselves using their callsign and respond to the scene with emergency lights and sirens, ending with the call's daily incident number, the 171st call of the day.
Additional broadcasts will be requests for information on "Cal IDs", or "CalOps" (the numbers that appear at the top of California Department of Motor Vehicles driver licenses) or on vehicle license plates, the result of which provides all of the expected details about the subject plus important details such as whether or not the licensee has any wants or warrants, FTAs (failure to appear in court) or FTPs (failure to pay a fine), etc.
For convenience, smaller, corded, hand-held speaker-microphones can be plugged into these radios and then clipped to parts of the uniform shirt such as a front pocket or shoulder loop.
Originally, Motorola MX-series analog handheld units were used when the transition from VHF to UHF "T-band" dispatch/tactical frequencies was made in the early 1980s.
The senior-most detective is therefore permitted to take charge of an incident when it is necessary for investigative purposes, superseding the chain of command of other higher-ranking officers in attendance.
[20][21] In 2008, then-Chief William Bratton began working with federal agencies to assess the use of a more predictive approach to policing.
Though certain cities such as Santa Cruz, Oakland, and New Orleans banned predictive policing over concerns surrounding its disproportional effects on racialized communities, the practice continues in the LAPD.
[22] The Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration Program (LASER) began in 2011 and is a strategy that includes location-based and offender-based models.
[23] This program uses a point based system where individuals are assigned a LASER score, which is later used to evaluate their potential risk.
Three aspects of offender behavior are incorporated into the algorithm that is informed by a decade of research on criminal patterns: Palantir is a platform where the LAPD uses data to send out reports to officers.
[23] The platform works by merging data from crime and arrest reports, automated license plate reader (ALPR), rap sheets and other sources.
