Know Your LAPD Senior Lead Officer: the SLO is a Cop in Your Corner

What’s the name of the LAPD Senior Lead Officer (SLO) assigned to your neighborhood, and what’s his cell number? If you can answer those two questions this article is not for you. All others may be helped by this overview of a sometimes unknown public safety fact: each of us has a cop in our corner – a Senior Lead Officer assigned by LAPD to respond to requests from members of the community.

Crimes do happen in our beautiful, peaceful-appearing neighborhoods, which are served by two LAPD Divisions (or neighborhood “stations”): Wilshire and Olympic. Stats from Wilshire Division for the week of July 26 to August 1 show that 88 crimes were committed in its area, with almost 90% of them being thefts or burglaries, quite often from vehicles. The thefts also included 8 categorized as grand theft auto. Fortunately, no assaults with a deadly weapon were reported that week, but there were nine aggravated assaults, two grand theft person crimes, and one sexual assault. This is sobering news for our communities.

What can each of us do about this? There are several solutions, ranging from organizing our blocks with a Neighborhood Watch with Block Captains to securing our vehicles and never leaving anything on the seats that may tempt a thief to break in.  We can also secure our homes, be vigilant about what’s going on around us, and never be too cautious about speaking up when we see something out of the ordinary.  And that’s where our Senior Lead Officers come in.

LAPD Senior Lead Officers are the police department’s liaisons with specific parts of the city…and each area in Los Angeles has its own Senior Lead Officer.  The SLOs are responsible for crime “Reporting Districts” and general public safety issues in those districts, including things like illegal activities at a park, aggressive panhandlers in a shopping area, concerns about a rash of burglaries in your neighborhood, etc. They can also help establish Neighborhood Watch programs, if you don’t already have one.

There are several SLOs assigned to our surrounding neighborhoods, including Brookside, Fremont Place, Hancock Park, La Brea/Hancock, Larchmont Village, Mid-Wilshire, Miracle Mile, Park La Brea, Sycamore Square, Windsor Square, Wilshire Park and Windsor Village, among others.

Here is a thee-step program to help you connect with your SLO and take advantage of their services:

Step 1 – If you live in an area covered by Wilshire Division, go to the Basic Car Area Map at http://www.lapdwilshire.com/wilshire-senior-lead-officers.html and and scroll down one page to Wilshire SLO / Basic Car Map  to see which SLO is assigned to your neighborhood.  If you live in Olympic Division, the Basic Car Area Map is available at http://assets.lapdonline.org/assets/pdf/Olym_BC.pdf.

Step 2 – If you live in Wilshire Division, write down the name and cell number of your SLO.
Basic Car 7A1: No SLO currently assigned: (213) 793-0708
Basic Car 7A17: SLO Dave Cordova: (213) 793-0650
Basic Car 7A21: SLO Geoffrey Taff: (213) 590-5410
Basic Car 7A33: SLO Perry Jones: (213) 793-0782
Basic Car 7A47: SLO Hebel Rodriguez: (213) 793-0715
Basic Car 7A53: SLO Adam Green: (213) 793-0647
Basic Car 7A69: SLO Spiro Roditis: (213) 590-5407
Basic Car 7A73: SLO Charles Thomas: (213) 793-0786
Basic Car 7A85: SLO Hector Marquez: (213) 793-0790

For Olympic Division, Senior Lead Officer Harry Cho is responsible for most of our Greater Wilshire area neighborhoods south of Wilshire Blvd.  He can be reached  [email protected], or by telephone at (213) 793-0649.  Senior Lead Officer Joe Pelayo covers Olympic Division neighborhoods (including Windsor Square and Larchmont) north of Wilshire.  He can be reached at [email protected] or (213) 793-0709.

Step 3 – sign up for E-Policing at http://www.lapdonline.org/e_policing  E-Policing enables Senior Lead Officers, Area Captains and Detectives to e-mail newsletters, crime trends and other important information to you. When you sign up for E-policing, you will receive emails from your Senior Lead Officer (SLO), detailing specific crimes in the area, crime trends, prevention tips and other useful information.

As your SLO will tell you, the more we work together and the more we share information, the safer we’ll all be.  So get to know your SLO.  Be safe!

[This article has been updated to include SLO Joe Pelayo, who was inadvertently left out of the original story.]