LAPD Captain Provides Updates at Community Council Virtual Meeting

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

The Pacific Palisades Community Council hosted LAPD West Division Commanding Officer Captain III Jonathan Tom at its most recent meeting, which took place via Zoom on Thursday, August 13.

Tom addressed the nearly 50 board and community members who were tuned into the meeting.

“I’d like to say truthfully that the community is very demanding but it’s also very supportive overall, so I’m OK with that,” Tom shared at the start of his nearly hour-long talk. “Our job is to serve the community, and we should be held accountable and you should ask tough questions, that’s what I’m here for.”

Tom addressed local crime statistics for West Los Angeles: Typically, in a year, the West LA area sees one or two homicides, but as of the meeting, there were three, Tom explained. West Bureau—which covers Hollywood, West LA, Pacific, Wilshire and Olympic, had 18 homicides in 2019, but are already at 27 so far in 2020.

“Crime wise, we have struggled with grand theft auto all year long,” Tom explained. “We are struggling with those numbers and the thing that I will just continue to press with the community—if you can get the word out—we have about half of the cars that are stolen, we know for a fact, because the victims tell us, that the keys were in the car.”

In seven out of 10 vehicles that were reported stolen in West LA the week prior to the meeting, the owners admitted that keys were left in the car, whether they were parked in the driveway, garage or out on the street.

“We’d just like to remind everyone to just kind of get the word out, although we live in a great neighborhood and, generally speaking, crime is very low here, we still have a trend of cars being stolen—in fact, that’s happening all over the city,” Tom continued.

He attributed part of the uptick to potentially be due to the fact that people are staying put and not moving their cars as often, allowing for people to go around and door check, meaning walking around and trying door handles.

The vast majority of vehicles are being recovered intact and are just being used for transportation, Tom explained, which is different than grand theft auto trends in the past, where parts of cars were sold.

Tom also addressed what LAPD budget cuts could mean in Pacific Palisades.

“The bottom line is I don’t know because there hasn’t been any specific direction yet,” Tom said. “But what I would say is you’re not going to lose your senior lead officer because that’s fundamentally an important part of our community policing model, and in these times especially, outreach into the community is important.”

As far as the beach detail that is specific to the Palisades, Tom said that while he does not know if the community could lose it, he would fight very strongly to keep that car there, unless LAPD gets depleted of resources—“if it came down to it where I had no one else, then we potentially could lose the beach detail.”

Tom shared a story of a time where he was treated poorly by police officers while attending USC. There was a misunderstanding where he and his friends were handcuffed after the police believed they were driving a stolen vehicle. This experience, Tom explained, shaped how he runs his department.

He touched on the fact that the police department that he joined in 1996 is “vastly different from the one we’re in today.”

“We’ve come a long way, like a lot of organizations, a lot of agencies, a lot of people,” Tom shared. “We’ve just changed over the years and I think that we’ve gotten more compassionate, we have a better understanding of how to treat the community.”