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06/17/05
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
The demand for more police officers is high and that means fierce competition for new recruits.
Lt. David Gabriel>> We are reaching crisis levels or at least a crisis point in terms of hiring difficulties and, rather than wait for the train to crash completely after a derailment, we want to make sure and try to fix this problem before it gets there.
Val>> And then, they seem to move with no effort, but being a modern dancer in Los Angeles is one tough job.
It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.
Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val>> If you want to put more cops on the beat, you would think that's simple. Just hire, train and deploy them, right? Well, in fact, there is stiff competition for qualified recruits and cities in Southern California are fighting with each other for the best candidates. As Sam Louie tells us, that has forced the LAPD to spend a lot of money and use some slick Hollywood production techniques to attract candidates.
Sam Louie>> "To Protect and To Serve" is the well-known motto of the Los Angeles Police Department. These days, the LAPD must also learn to promote and to recruit. No one knows that better than Lieutenant Art Miller. He works in recruitment and realizes it's a different job market compared to when he first started twenty-seven years ago.
Lieutenant Art Miller>> Well, I think recruitment in general in law enforcement across the nation is very difficult. We're all hiring from the same pool. We're all seeking that same candidate. In the Los Angeles area with a goal of hiring seven hundred twenty officers over the next fiscal year, it makes it difficult because we're competing with large agencies in the Southern California area as well as throughout the state.
Sam Louie>> To get those seven hundred twenty officers, the LAPD will have to recruit a huge number of candidates, more than fourteen thousand, so the department is employing some creative recruitment tactics like this pitch.
Announcer>> "For the officers of the LAPD, it's all in a day's work."
Sam Louie>> The city recently spent five hundred thousand dollars to make and market three short, but slick, recruitment pitches coming to a theater near you.
Announcer>> "In the city of Los Angeles, when duty calls, the LAPD responds."
Sam Louie>> The trailer depicts three different scenarios. One involves a kidnapped girl.
Announcer>> "We have a critical missing. There is an Amber Alert, so let's look for any information you get."
Sam Louie>> Another shows a family disturbance.
[Film Clip]
Sam Louie>> The final clip is a tense standoff.
[Film Clip]
Lieutenant Art Miller>> What it shows, again, it's a day in the life of a pair of LAPD officers that shows not only the excitement of the job, but the uncertainty of the job. It also shows the diversity of the city.
Sam Louie>> But one promotional campaign is not enough, especially when half the applicants will be disqualified during their background checks.
Lieutenant Art Miller>> It is a constant pressure that is put on the recruitment section, that I put on the officers, to have them understand that we need to, on a continuous basis, go out and recruit the most qualified candidates so that we can fill our Academy classes.
Sam Louie>> To do this, the department has eased some of its criteria. Gone are the height and weight requirements as well as the forty year old upper age limit. The department also offers a flexible work schedule.
Lieutenant Art Miller>> Depending on your assignment, you can work three twelve-hour days, you can work four ten-hour days or you can work a conventional forty hour work week.
Sam Louie>> The three-day work schedule has been controversial, but when it comes to recruiting candidates, it's an attractive recruiting tool.
Announcer>> "The LAPD is hiring. Become a part of the team. Visit us at joinLAPD.com."
Sam Louie>> A new website is another way to attract candidates, essential in this computer age.
Lieutenant Art Miller>> You can go online and take a sample test of what the Civil Service test might be like.
Sam Louie>> Lieutenant Miller says his department will even go to colleges and job fairs with tests in hand.
Lieutenant Art Miller>> It does streamline the process. It makes it more convenient for them and, if we want to be competitive in today's job market, these are some of the tactics that we will use and they are very effective for us.
Sam Louie>> Large police departments aren't the only ones having a challenging time finding qualified applicants. Here in Burbank, the department has been trying to fill twelve officer positions since the beginning of this year. That job falls to Lieutenant David Gabriel in the Recruitment and Personnel section for Burbank Police.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> We've noticed that we are reaching crisis levels or at least a crisis point in terms of hiring difficulties and, rather than wait for the train to crash completely after a derailment, we want to make sure and try to fix this problem before it gets there.
Sam Louie>> In the past year and a half, the Burbank Police Department began an innovative approach to deal with the shortage.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> We've had the cable television program that we talk about recruiting. We've had signs put up on bus bench shelters. Our media center mall has a banner hanging. We're going to a very large job fair in Los Angeles.
Sam Louie>> Burbank Police also offers generous signing bonuses up to five thousand dollars to new officers.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> Drastic times call for drastic measures, so we put a lot of time and money and creativity into figuring out ways to attract candidates.
Sam Louie>> Like Los Angeles, Burbank Police made changes to its requirements. They've relaxed portions of their physical and written exams.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> They had things to do with memory exercises that an applicant would have to look, for instance, at a page of a car with different items in it and turn the page over and, within a minute, have to describe what was in that car. So the memory sections are gone.
Sam Louie>> Gabriel acknowledges the changes give applicants a better chance of passing, but insists they do not compromise the integrity or quality of his department.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> The testing elements that were eliminated were non-necessary elements, according to the state of California.
[Film Clip]
Sam Louie>> Officer Derek Green is one of Burbank's newest hires.
Officer Derek Green>> I don't think there's another job out there like it. It's pretty unique in the sense that it's something new every day. You don't know what's going to happen.
Sam Louie>> Green says Burbank was his first choice because it's the city where he grew up.
Officer Derek Green>> It's a city where every little move you make, every job you do out here on the streets on patrol, has a direct impact on the community and is highly appreciated by the community.
Sam Louie>> While Green appreciates the close-knit feel of Burbank and the incentives offered by his department, he also realizes that's not enough for many of today's younger generation.
Officer Derek Green>> More than ever these days, the younger age bracket, my age group, the twenties, is more concerned with the money than the love of the job. And the money's not cutting it, so it's not luring as many people in.
Sam Louie>> In Burbank, the top pay scale for an experienced officer is $65,000 a year, but money isn't the only consideration for new recruits.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> Younger folks tend to understand priorities of balancing family and recreation with vocation.
Sam Louie>> Another recruitment obstacle? Accusations of police brutality.
[Film Clip]
Sam Louie>> A series of controversial beatings, shootings and scandals over the years have put police in a negative light.
Lieutenant David Gabriel>> The police departments are responsible for their own messes and their own problems. I think the media has also tended to sensationalize problems within the law enforcement community or action that police officers have taken. I think, taken together, all of that has painted a little bit of a dim view of police officers in their work and a negative viewpoint in general. I think it kind of scares a few applicants away that we normally might have gotten.
Sam Louie>> And even after finding candidates, getting them through training and graduating a new class of officers, there's still the possibility other cities will try to woo them away.
Jeff Jensen>> You know, we'll get you right through the process and, you know, we'll get you through backgrounds and, you know, since you've already been through LAPD backgrounds, that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Yeah, that type of stuff (laughter).
Brian Frieson>> They try to lure you away and say they'll get you on the fast track, hired within, but in the end, I knew I wanted to be with Los Angeles.
Sam Louie>> Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief Bill Bratton have promised to put more qualified officers on the street. But as long as there is fierce competition for qualified candidates, that promise will be hard to fulfill. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times.
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Val>> California got some good news last week. The Pentagon announced which military bases would be closed or realigned and California came away relatively unscathed. We will lose about two thousand jobs. Compare that to more than ninety thousand jobs in the 1980's and 1990's. And no one is more relieved than the people at the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
There are forty-five hundred employees, civilian and military, at the Los Angeles Air Force Base. They will all be keeping their jobs. John Parsons is a local city councilman and a member of the task force that organized the efforts to save the base. John Parsons, you can declare victory, in a sense, you and your task force, because the Los Angeles Air Force Base is not going to be closed. Didn't even lose one job.
John Parsons>> Certainly, for this round, we can feel good about what's happened, but it's not over yet. We still have to -- the process goes before the commission. We're prepared for that. We're prepared for people to still try and steal the Los Angeles Air Force Base away from us.
Val>> Now what do you think did it? Because in the 1980's and 1990's, California was hit really hard. More than fifty percent of all the jobs that were cut in the military were in California. This time, it's only about eight percent. What's the difference? What happened?
John Parsons>> Well, I think a big part of what happened is the huge effort that we mounted that we haven't really had to do in the past. This round was presumed to be much bigger. It got down-scaled. I think the down-scaling helped us a lot, but I think that we had such a huge effort. All of our California delegation in Washington, D.C., the state legislators, the Governor, our local elected officials and all of our local businesses really pulled together and helped us a lot. We were able to hire some very smart lobbyists both locally in the state of California and in Washington, D.C. and that helped out a lot too.
Val>> What kind of impact does the Los Angeles Air Force Base make on this area and, therefore, what kind of difference does it make that it's staying open?
John Parsons>> Well, the first thing we talked about is the impact that the Los Angeles Air Force Base has on national security. It's absolutely tremendous. The space is the ultimate high ground. Because of the Los Angeles Air Force Base, we control the ultimate high ground and, in the military, that's a big thing.
Now obviously, to us locally, it is also very large because this is the anchor to the aerospace business in California which has really grown out of the South Bay area, out of Los Angeles County, and all over the West Coast. And because the Los Angeles Air Force Base started here in 1954, fifty years worth of growth has really been an important part of our quality of life in Los Angeles County.
Val>> But it's not a typical base. It doesn't have a runway, it doesn't have planes, it doesn't have, you know, military paraphernalia. It's, what, mainly research or missile system research?
John Parsons>> A lot of research, but the most important thing to us is the procurement. This is where they issue all the contracts out of. Eight and a half to ten billion dollars annually. There is sixty billion dollars in open contracts that are controlled through the Los Angeles Air Force Base right here. It's an office complex and office complexes look like easy things to move, but what's not easy are the people. So along with the procurement goes all the development and that's what we do here in the South Bay area, in El Segundo and all throughout the region with all of our aerospace companies in this area.
Val>> So it affects not just the people on the base, but all its contractors and a lot of private sector businesses and companies that get contracts from the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
John Parsons>> The private sector is huge, but it goes beyond that. How the money turns over and the economy is tremendous. We have fifty thousand jobs that are tied to the Los Angeles Air Force Base. That's eight billion dollars just in Los Angeles County. On a state level, it's one hundred twelve thousand jobs and sixteen billion dollars in the economy.
Val>> That are tied to this base in some way or another?
John Parsons>> That are tied to this base, right. And those are the jobs directly and indirectly because, obviously, the people that live in the community are spending that money in the community and that money flows through the community, so it's a tremendous impact. Now that's just on the economy. On the local governments and on the state governments, that's also huge. There is three hundred million dollars just in state income tax that have generated through the contracts that go through the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
Val>> Now this is just one base, but there are other bases in California that were hit hard. In particular, Ventura? The naval base in Ventura?
John Parsons>> That's right. The Navy Base, Ventura County was hit pretty hard. Corona was hit pretty hard. Some of the reserve sites were hit pretty hard. As a net, California did pretty well. The big difference this time is that we were very united. In previous rounds, we weren't united, so I'm really proud of the effort that has been pulled together on all levels of government and throughout the industry in California.
Val>> Nevertheless, the navy base in Ventura, I think they lost more than fifteen hundred jobs. Norco out in Corona lost about eight hundred jobs. What does the commission look at? Why do they decide who loses jobs and what should be shrunk?
John Parsons>> Well, the process that the commission is going to go through is one of analyzing whether or not the Pentagon followed the rules correctly. So they're going to look to see if all the data that was collected was analyzed and that that was done per the eight criteria that were established by the Pentagon and approved by Congress. Obviously, those bases will make the argument that it wasn't done correctly and they will try and get off the list. I believe it was 1995 -- it may have been 1993 -- Point Magoo or Port Hueneme, one of those two bases, was on the list before and they were able to get themselves off the list, so I'm sure they're very prepared to make that argument again.
Val>> So this is quite a process because the Pentagon makes the initial recommendation, then another commission looks over exactly how the Pentagon made the decision and tries to appeal and tries to get bases off and on and so forth. Then finally, Congress has to approve the final base closure list, right?
John Parsons>> Right. The interesting thing is, the way the process has been set up previously and continues to be, for Congress it's an up or down vote. Either you vote for or against the list, but you can't change it. And from the commission, the list goes to the president.
Val>> So you've got a ways to go.
John Parsons>> We do.
Val>> You've got to keep your task force working.
John Parsons>> We are working. Our Steering Committee met again this morning. The list came out on Friday and we're meeting on Monday morning. We're prepared. We have a lot of excitement because we're successful so far, but we're not letting our guard down.
Val>> John Parsons, thank you so much for meeting us out here at the Los Angeles Air Force Base and thanks for your work.
John Parsons>> Thanks, Val.
Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".
Val>> She has said that art is worth struggling for and struggle is the word when it comes to keeping a modern dance company alive in Los Angeles. She is Donna Sternberg and she and her company are now celebrating their twentieth anniversary. Vicki Curry visited the modern dance troupe as they rehearsed for their performance.
Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg believes in the power of dance. Despite twenty years of hard work keeping her small company alive, she believes.
Donna Sternberg>> In this day and age, there's not all that many people that are interested in movement for movement's sake. I really think that movement by itself is a communicative medium and that it can bypass a lot of things that, when you speak verbally, kind of get in the way.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Yet Sternberg admits that, of all the arts, dance is often the hardest to understand.
Donna Sternberg>> To see bodies just moving without words, without any explanation, it's like what is this?
[Film Clip]
Donna Sternberg>> Most people don't even know what modern dance is. They think it's club dancing, strip dancing or some kind of amorphous, expressive via tree dancing. And then when you try to explain it, it's difficult to articulate what is modern dance.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> So Sternberg lets her work speak for itself and encourages people to listen by giving lectures and demonstrations.
[Film Clip]
Donna Sternberg>> I am really interested in de-mystifying the choreographic process and showing people that it really is about what you, when you see my work, what do you get from it? Not what my intent is, but what do you receive from it?
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg's focus on movement is somewhat unique for a media-minded city like Los Angeles.
Donna Sternberg>> We do straight-out dancing. We don't do theatricals, we don't do mixed media stuff. We're pretty dance-oriented. My style tends to be very big movement that's a dance. When I start a new piece, I try to do something movement-wise or use different kinds of movement that I haven't used before and challenge myself.
Vicki Curry>> Since starting the company in 1985, Sternberg has created over fifty-five works, including three full evening length pieces.
Donna Sternberg>> The process of beginning a new piece is so exciting because it's just like a brand new slate and the possibilities are just endless. My inspiration is from everywhere and everything. I never know what it's from. It can be from -- I've done pieces based on paintings of artists. I've done pieces from political ideas. I've done pieces from being in nature. I never kind of know what's going to attract me.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Finding dancers is especially challenging for Sternberg. Most dance companies in Los Angeles hire dancers on a project-by-project basis, but Sternberg asks her dancers to make a one-year commitment to the company.
Donna Sternberg>> We have a steady group of dancers and we work throughout the year and I think that enables us to develop a cohesive kind of style together and then have an incredible group of dedicated dancers and you know they're not there because the money is huge. This is their passion and they're willing to dedicate a huge amount of time to do it.
[Film Clip]
Vicki Curry>> Donna Sternberg has plenty of other challenges to face: lack of funding, rehearsal space and community support. So why has she kept going after all these years?
Donna Sternberg>> I ask myself that all the time (laughter). I think it's because making dances makes me feel the most alive. The point is that you get to create and creating, as far as I can see, is what we're on the planet to do.
[Film Clip]
Val>> If you'd like more information on Donna Sternberg and dancers, you can go to their website at dsdancers.com, or give them a call.
[Film Clip]
Val>> You can tell a lot from a family about the contents of its garage and, every weekend, the contents from thousands of garages are spread out on lawns and sidewalks in garage sales. That inspired Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, to do a little bit of suburban archaeology.
Cris Franco>> Aside from an afternoon of Botox injections, there is nothing more Southern Californian than a garage sale. So like a modern archeologist, I went to go visit a few of these front yard bazaars to see what they said about our "life and times".
We're a very hopeful nation, as reflected by all the exercise equipment for sale. First we hope that this gizmo will help us lose weight and then we hope that somebody else will buy it from us.
There are tons of old toys. Oops, at a Los Angeles garage sale, nothing is ever referred to as old. It's "vintage", or a "collectible", or a "classic".
It's a sad day when a man sells his Barbie Dream House. I should know.
I don't know why people buy old clothes. Why would I wear someone else's ill-fitted, fading t-shirt when I can just wear my own ill-fitted, faded t-shirt?
And a garage sale brings out the window dresser in all of us. Look at how creatively this gate becomes a clearance rack. Looks like the clothes all tried to get away and they got all caught up in the electrified fence. "Nothing escapes the gate of doom."
This woman, Kathy, she has my memories in her hand. Long before there was a war between the blue states and the red states, there was the war between the Blue Stamps and the Green Stamps.
Security isn't a big issue at most yard sales. Winona Ryder could easily abscond with this big-button phone or this complete set of dishes. However, with Uncle Bob standing -- or rather sitting -- watch, I had to pay a whole dollar for this album. It was an impulse buy. I have no idea who Freddy Quinn is or why he's flying in a plane. I mean, for a dollar, how bad can an album be?
[Film Clip]
People who are moving off and have big ticket items for sale like furniture or appliances. But you know, not everything is for sale. Mary wouldn't sell her dolls and what motivates most merchants? Money.
This is Susan, the self-proclaimed garage sale queen, totally organized with signs and purchase conditions. She makes about four hundred dollars per weekend. Susan and hubby are a very happy couple and why not? They've got a tree that grows dresses.
And P.T. Barnum? He was right. Some people will tell you the tallest tales to sell you their junk -- or collectibles. The seller of this head said it was a magic talisman bringing great luck to whomever owned it and rubbed its head. Right. Who was crazier? Her or the nut that paid her a dollar for it? I'm feeling lucky.
Val>> Oh, save that for me, Cris. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val>> Next time on Life and Times --
One man's dream took shape in the outskirts of Santa Barbara County.
>> This is a beautiful monument to kind of a fevered mind. You know, the guy let nothing stand in his way. He just went out there and built and built.
Val>> So why was this dream abandoned? That's next time on Life and Times.
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