Over and Out

NORTH HOLLYWOOD — Under hazy skies and sweltering heat Saturday, a trumpeter played taps and the U.S. and California flags were pulled from a battered flagpole for the very last time.

After eight years of negotiation, three years of construction and two mayoral administrations, the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood Division finally abandoned its antiquated and cramped station at 11480 Tiara St. on Saturday for spacious new headquarters at 11640 Burbank Blvd.

To commemorate the move, 30 officers on the station’s final shift lined up in two rows just after 6 p.m. for a ceremonial field inspection on Tiara Street.

While nearby residents gazed from afar or peered out of windows at the somewhat unusual sight, the division’s commander, Capt. Richard Wahler, and night watch commander, Sgt. Mathew St. Pierre, slowly strode past each row of uniformed men and women, occasionally straightening a badge or brushing off lint.

“This is a proud day for all of us,” Wahler said. “Twenty years from now, you will be telling the new boots [recruits] about this.”

“OK, p.m. watch, let’s get back to work!” St. Pierre shouted afterward. “But don’t forget the cake and pizza in the roll-call room!”

Dedicated by then-Mayor Norris Poulson and Police Chief William Parker in 1957, the Tiara Street station had far outlived its usefulness.

The new, three-story, $15.2-million police station, is situated on 2.75 acres near the 170 Freeway. With its 37,340 square feet of space, it is more than twice the size of the old station.

The site was obtained from the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. In return for the land, the parks department got $160,000 and is scheduled to take over the old station in July and convert it into a recreation center for senior citizens.

The move actually began Monday as the division’s 350 officers and staff members juggled their regular duties with the task of packing up 40 years’ worth of files and mementos.

In the oppressive heat of the old station, with its broken air-conditioning system, they ran investigations, logged complaints and filed reports--just as two generations of North Hollywood officers had done before them. They also took down pictures and plaques, stacked rows of cardboard boxes and loaded panel trucks, joking and laughing as they looked forward to their new surroundings.

The results were like a miniature version of the evacuation of the Allies from Dunkirk during World War II--massive, fast and quiet. During the day shifts, officers used personal cars, trucks and anything on wheels they could scrounge up to move boxes and equipment.

Moving an entire station is not the same as moving out of a house or apartment. Essential phone and computer lines as well as radio-communication equipment had to be installed in the new station and tested before officers moved in.

The most important task for Capt. Wahler and Lt. Lenny Hundshamer, a night watch commander who chaired the station’s moving committee, was not the actual move but being able to maintain adequate manpower, regular patrols and a working station even though equipment, patrol cars and officers were split between two buildings about a mile and a half apart.

“This is something that doesn’t happen very often,” said Wahler. “We had very little experience to draw from when we planned this move.”

As the completion of the building neared, North Hollywood officials carefully drew up plans that, with minimal disruption, would transfer different sections of the station to the new building over a six-day period. One officer from each detective section, for example, stayed at the old station during the week to take phone calls and meet with the public. Patrol officers, with their black and white cars, were the last group to leave Saturday.

Most of the detective sections had set up shop inside the new station and were already hard at work by midweek.

“We’re way ahead of schedule,” said Hundshamer on Thursday. “I’ve never seen so many excited people.”

Hundshamer said that there had been so many postponements of the station’s opening over the years that, at first, many officers didn’t want to believe that the move was finally happening.

For others, who had spent most their careers at the old station, the move was bittersweet.

“The building itself doesn’t hold any sentimental value for me,” said Lt. Ron LaRue, who came to the division as a captain’s adjutant in 1969 and has been its chief of detectives since 1980. “But I think we’ll miss some of the esprit de corp that came from being cooped up under each other.”

The larger station will mean more room for officers as well as some needed peace and quiet. However, many detectives say they will miss the intimacy and loud radio chatter that gave the old station its charm.

Residents living around the old station say that they will miss the police presence in their neighborhood as well. Although police will continue patrols around Tiara Street, some neighbors believe that drug trafficking and gang violence will increase when the station closes.

“The police station is a buffer zone between the gangs around here,” said a 41-year-old man who did not want to be identified. “It’s just like the United Nations sitting between Israelis and Palestinians, you move the U.N. out and the two sides start fighting.”

He said the police aren’t the only ones leaving the neighborhood. He and his family plan to move from the house they’ve lived in for more than six years after the station closes.

Meanwhile, the last shifts at Tiara Street revealed a humorous side of LAPD officers that the public rarely sees.

During the day, officers munched on free food donated by local businesses while some caught the Lakers game on a TV set in the old roll-call room. Kent McCord of “Adam-12” fame dropped by on the morning shift; the pilot episode of the popular 1960s police show had scenes of the Tiara Street station in happier days.

Music blared from a radio at the front desk while a large poster of a tyrannosaurus rex glared from a spot on a wall that formerly had photos of station officers.

When asked why the T-Rex was placed there, a front desk officer replied, “Oh, that’s just a picture of a sergeant who works here.”