LAPD - Harbor Division

If you, a loved one or a family member has been arrested by or is being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Harbor Division, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Facing such a situation, it is normal to need to know the bail amount (if any) associated with the offense if own recognizance (OR) release is denied. One may also want to know what evidence is needed to convict one for the crime that allegedly took place, the defenses possible and the sentence a judge can impose if one is convicted of the crime.

We at Greg Hill & Associates believe it is valuable also to know a few more things before interacting with any branch of law enforcement. It can be helpful to know the size of the police or sheriff’s department, the area’s demographics, the most common types of crime the department investigates and just a bit about the area’s history to make one’s communication with law enforcement more meaningful, more savvy and perhaps, more respectful. This can lead to a better outcome than if one lacks such perspective.

This article is presented with this goal in mind. As our office is in Torrance, we have handled over 200 cases in the last 25 years arising in the area patrolled by the Harbor Division

The LAPD Harbor Division Community Station is staffed with 258 sworn police officers and an unspecified number of civilian support staff. The jail at the Harbor Division can hold up to 60 people.

The Harbor Area has a population of 171,000 and encompasses 27 square miles. It is the largest area in the LAPD’s South Bureau. There are four distinct communities that are fall under the enforcement of the Harbor Division: San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and the Harbor Gateway.

San Pedro is well known for being a largely Hispanic and Latino community. However, it is also home to the largest Italian-American community in Southern California, centered on the "Via Italia" (South Cabrillo Avenue). San Pedro is also considered the heart of the Croatian dn Norwegian communities in Los Angeles. The Croatian community, originally composed of seafarers and fishermen from the Dalmatia region, has been present in San Pedro since the settlement began more than 200 years ago. The City of Los Angeles even named a stretch of 9th Street "Croatian Place" in honor of the city's old Croatian community.

A total of 80,065 people lived in San Pedro's 12.06 square miles, according to the 2000 U.S. census—averaging 6,640 people per square mile, near Los Angeles' total population density. In 2000, Whites made up 44.2% of the population, Latinos were at 40.8%, African Americans at 6.1%, Asians at 4.8% and others at 4.1%.

San Pedro is home to Rancho San Pedro (RSP), also called Rancho San Pedro Locos, and their former allies turned enemies; Dodge City Crips. The Angels Gate gang is one of the larger other gangs in San Pedro, although there are numerous small other gangs and tagging crews that pop up on occasion, only to disappear in a few years.

Wilmington is known as a blue-collar neighborhood dominated by longshoremen, oil refinery workers and day laborers. Featuring a heavy concentration of industry and the third-largest oil field in the continental United States, Wilmington has a high percentage of Latino and and foreign-born residents. Nearly 20 percent of Wilmington’s total land area is taken up by oil refineries — roughly 3.5 times more area than is dedicated to open and accessible green spaces. Banning High School is in Wilmington. 86% of the population of Wilmington is considered Hispanic or Latino.

Wilmington is home to Westside, Eastside & Northside Wilmas, predominantly Hipanic and Latino gangs. The gangs are territorial and active. We have represented several members of these gangs over the years.

Wilmington is bordered by Carson to the north, Long Beach to the east and San Pedro to the south.

Harbor City, which has no harbor within its city limits, is to the west of Wilmington. The area includes two high schools and seven other schools, as well as the Ken Malloy Harbor Regional and two other parks. There is a Kaiser Permanente hospital as well, across the street from the Ken Malloy Harbor Regional park.

Harbor City’s western border is Western Avenue and to the south, it is Anaheim Street and Palos Verdes Drive North up to the intersection with Western. The norther border is Sepulveda Boulevard from Western to Normandie. Its eastern border is Harbor (I-110) Freeway. Harbor College is within Harbor City.

Harbor Gateway is a 5.14 square mile, narrow north-south corridor situated approximately between Vermont Avenue and Figueroa Street north of the San Diego (I-405) Freeway, and Western Avenue and Normandie south of the San Diego Freeway. The territory was acquired by the city of Los Angeles in a shoestring annexation to connect San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and the Port of Los Angeles with the rest of Los Angeles, largely for LAPD jurisdiction and patrolling.

Today, it is a mostly industrial area with trucking distribution centers for logistics and freight hauling.

The strip was simply open fields before World War II, but "Then came factories, attracting workers who needed housing," and builders "filled those fields with small houses and duplexes." Cubans settled in the 1960’s and Mexican immigrants in the 1970’s. From 1985 to 1992, some seventy-five single-family homes were replaced by nearly five hundred apartment units, and the neighborhood gained some 1,500 residents, with "no plan, no thought," as the area's leading developer put it.

Harbor Gateway lacks much of what makes a community a community—no central business district, no civic center or gathering place, no library branch, no police station ... no post office. Its largest park is a cemetery. And, despite the new name, mailing addresses of residents remain unchanged. They still say Torrance or Gardena, not Los Angeles.

In 1985, Harbor Gateway was referred to as a "crime-plagued area," and residents blamed the widespread availability of alcohol for "dozens of robberies, burglaries and other crimes" in the blue-collar neighborhood. There were at that time 51 liquor outlets within a two-mile radius of the intersection of El Segundo Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.

In 1991, parts of the Gateway were known to be "the turf of warring black and Latino gangs, and Gardena High School students of those two ethnicities "clashed after a multicultural program in the school auditorium." In December 2006 the Los Angeles Times reported that racial tensions "have held this working-class neighborhood in a state of fear for years" and that the Latino 204th Street Gang, "noted for preying on" blacks had warned all blacks to stay south of 206th Street. The neighborhood averaged "about one Latino-on-black homicide" each year since 1997, the Los Angeles Police Department reported.

Since then, gang tensions have abated, but remain at a lower level and occasionally erupt in shootings.

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