"LAPD carpenter Mark Jenkins replaces 75-year-old Mae Phillips's door after the LAPD broke down her door loooking for her grandson in Venice." (Tina Burch/Staff Photographer)
Posted on 03/16/2008 8:01:03 AM PDT by BenLurkin
When Los Angeles cops busted through Mae Phillips' front door last month looking for her grandson, they blew out the door jamb, ripped out casing and drywall, and left the shattered remains hanging by the hinges. But just as sometimes happens in the movies, the suspect wasn't there - and Phillips became the unwitting victim in a real-life police raid seeking members and associates of a Venice street gang.
Enter LAPD's little-known "Wrong Doors Unit" - also known as Mark Jenkins.
"Mistakes do happen now and then," said Jenkins, a civilian carpenter with the Los Angeles Police Department.
"We're just there to fix the door. For the most part, people are really happy we're repairing these things. They're real happy to see their needs are being met."
Amid an LAPD civilian staff of 4,500, Jenkins often can be overlooked. But he plays a crucial role in fixing things that cops may break when serving warrants at what turn out to be wrong addresses.
Last year, Jenkins fixed eight doors damaged in such incidents - up from four the year before.
"It's really good in terms of the city image," said Laura Filitoff, commanding officer of the fiscal operations division, which oversees the supply section in which Jenkins works.
"Our cops go in, and they get the wrong door. We fix the problem. It builds good will in the community."
And when he's not fixing doors, Jenkins custom-builds everything from entryways and
stairways for bomb squad training exercises to custom lockers, crime-map frames and display cases. "The Police Department's requirements are unique," he said. "Weapons drawers for vehicles. Stuff you can't just go into Ikea and buy."
The duties keep Jenkins constantly on the move, even as the number of police-damaged doors has fallen far below what it used to be.
"I heard back in the day of (former Police Chief Daryl) Gates, they had 75 in one year, if I'm not mistaken. Right now, things are a lot more politically correct than they were back in the '70s and '80s," he said.
The 47-year-old Santa Monica native came to the LAPD as a reluctant city employee. His father was a handyman, and a young Jenkins dreamed of joining the tight-knit and well-paid International Longshoremen's Association, the largest union of maritime workers in North America.
But in 1993, Jenkins turned his childhood joy of playing with wood into his own business, called Mark Jenkins Woodworking, based in West L.A.
"I had no intention of ever being a city employee," Jenkins said.
Years ago, however, a welding teacher who worked for the Department of Water and Power by day and taught welding by night at the Pacific Maritime Association at Long Beach City College suggested that Jenkins apply for a cabinetmaker job opening with the city.
Jenkins took the civil service test in 1998 and passed. He interviewed for the job and was hired in July 2000. He now earns $65,000 a year in his full-time job with the LAPD.
And in his nearly eight years with the force, he has repaired 60 doors of all shapes and sizes in just about every neighborhood of the city.
"These people ... actually seem quite surprised to see the city's making an effort to right a wrong," Jenkins said. "It's gratifying to make people happy."
Quite often, Jenkins said, wrong doors can get busted down in the early morning hours as armed officers clad in riot gear conduct raids.
That's what happened to Phillips on Feb.19 when a team of officers busted through her door in Venice searching for her grandson - whom Phillips had kicked out two years ago.
Cops said they did their homework. The search warrant for the house culminated weeks of trying to cut rampant drug dealing in the increasingly gentrified neighborhood, said Detective Roger Gilbert, a narcotics investigator who oversaw the operation that morning to target members and associates of the Venice Shoreline Crips.
The man they were after was Phillips' grandson, Tom Dorand Young Jr., who Gilbert said was an associate who recently had been seen dealing crack in Venice.
"He keeps giving her address as his address of record," Gilbert said. "Everything that we had led us to believe that is where he is residing."
Gilbert sympathized with Phillips, who he said was an unwitting victim of her grandson's alleged gang activity.
"Here's a poor lady, she has a relative who is involving her in a criminal enterprise," Gilbert said. "He's bringing everything back to her door.
"So when we went in there and found out that she's being used, being abused, by family members, I think that the department should go out of its way to help her."
The day after police raided Phillips' home, Jenkins installed a steel stake as a temporary fix to secure her door while he ordered a $750, city-paid-for, custom-made solid Douglas fir replacement.
On Feb. 21, Jenkins repaired Phillips' door jamb, then returned the next day to fix the drywall and casing and lay down a coat of paint.
Earlier this month, Jenkins received the new door and went back out to Phillips' home to hang it and make sure it fit correctly.
He then took the door back to his shop - on the second floor at Piper Tech, the downtown clearinghouse for the city's trades workers - to put down three coats of varnish, a process that took six days.
On Thursday, he and partner Raul Juarez installed the door.
And Phillips was pleased.
"That's a good thing because I'm quite sure so many people went through what I been through, innocent and don't know which way to turn," the 75-year-old Phillips said.
Now, Jenkins is working in his 5,000-square-foot woodshop - complete with a table saw, jointer and planer - on dozens of shadow boxes to hold Medals of Valor.
He has to complete 25 of the walnut, metal and glass boxes that are used to ensconce the medals, which are one of the highest awards a police officer can receive.
Each box will take Jenkins eight to 10 hours to complete because of the intricacies of painstakingly shaping rough-cut lumber.
The boxes are then stained and varnished, tempered glass is inserted, and the interiors are wrapped with blue felt.
"It takes some time," Jenkins said. "The ceremony is May 27. It might sound like a ways away, but I'd like to get a jump on it ...
"LAPD carpenter Mark Jenkins replaces 75-year-old Mae Phillips's door after the LAPD broke down her door loooking for her grandson in Venice." (Tina Burch/Staff Photographer)
Job security ping.
Do they _REALLY_ need to bust in the door?
How about, oh, I dunno, knocking? I mean, if you have the house surrounded is this really necessary?
Depends on who you’re looking for.
The sound of a good door jam splintering is like viagra to a JBT ninja. I’d love to see a door manufacturer make a line of doors extruded out of superball material.
>>a line of doors extruded out of superball material.<<
Lol, knock them back on their Azzes.
There is no situation where a bullhorn wouldn’t work just as well. But you’re right, JBTs probably get off on knocking in doors.
Your right. We need to give the gangs more latitude. Do you actually believe that the police are as bad as the guys they are going after? Give the police a break.
There is NO excuse for breaking down the wrong door. Cops are to in love with the paramilitary operation. Most SWAT teams need to be immediately disbanded. You kind of thinking is what enables the FBI to openly spy on US citizens and gather private information with no warrants and cops violating citizens rights every day. It is sickening and disgusting.
I would bet almost all are. It is the result of a cash economy where you only get paid for delivering the goods, and not annoying the community where you work. Real freemarket capitalism.
I made the mistake of putting a pay phone in their area without permission. When I found out I went to leader and apologized and asked permission. Permission cost $10 per week. He had the local kids clean the phone and wipe it down daily and it became one of my most profitable units.
True capitalism.
Watch for the hip new show on NBC, coming soon:
"LAPD: WDU"
I am at a loss on this statement. You mean he lied? You didn't do surveillance on the property? You got a warrant based on "his word"? You raided the house and then realized he lied?
Insert WTF?!?+CAT
Thanks, I will check it out.
Our founding fathers had a "wrong doors unit", too...
*You're So Full Of $h!t I Can Smell It Over The Internet
They obviously left out the part about creating the need.
Get it right you blasted fools or find a job where there's less opportunity to MURDER INNOCENTS when you SCREW UP!
This is completely insane.
If the latter, then law-abiding citizens who shoot police breaking into their homes in such fashion as to make accurate identification difficult should be deemed fully justified in doing so; any police who harm such citizens should be prosecuted for murder or attempted murder as the case may be.
If it's more likely that the people breaking in are police, what exactly are the police for?
Because the KeystoneKops Krowd can’t reasd home numbers, the locals paid out in excess of a half million bucks to fix doors, some 60 of ‘em.
It would have been far cheaper to have called a local door company.
Kalifornia is its own punishment.
What in the world do you base that on?
Experience and reading.
I know a punk-*ss cop in Germany who has a collection of photos of all the doors he and his fellow JBT's have broken down, including mine.
Yes, it was a case of mistaken identity, but that didn't matter to him and his fellow JBT's.
Every else who lives on their “turf” is nothing but a victim — especially if they happen to be of another race. If you do not share a skin color with the gang-banger then you are in additional jeopardy.
In years past past I lived in one gang area and had friends who I visted regularly in another. Now my current hometown is getting the gangs and it is not a good thing. Hopefully things are better where you live...
And it's only going to get worse unless they are reined in and leashed by personal liability laws that hold individual officers as well as cities/states responsible for screwing up.
You kick in the wrong door, good info, bad info, or just too drunk with power to care and you not only lose your job, you spend the rest of your life paying through the nose as a warning to other cops to get it right.
How hard can it be to read a freaking mail box number and compare it to the warrant or do a little surveillance before starting the full frontal assault, machine gunning family pets and terrorizing innocent citizens?
Nope, they have select-fire weapons, grenades, assault vehicles, unlimited backup and an institutionalized defense mechanism.
We don't.
They need to behave themselves and go back to being peace officers.
Responsibility in adult organizations flows upward. Consequences (ie. civil and criminal charges, not adolescent vigilante crap) need to fall on the chiefs and mayors and judges who created the situation. Punishing the petty thugs at the sharp end makes you - and me - feel a little bit better, but next week their replacements will be kicking in the same doors for the same reasons.
I VAS JUST FOLLOWINK ORTERS! Is not an excuse for stupidity or criminality.
WOW, this 'puff' piece has sooooo many obvious wrong thinking libtard socialist angles that I'll hafta stop here and read the posts...shaking head in amazement...
LFOD...
Every else who lives on their “turf” is nothing but a victim — especially if they happen to be of another race profession. If you do not share a skin color brotherhood with the gang-banger LAPD then you are in additional jeopardy.
Everywhere Ive lived, non cops are treated like common criminals...
'Papers please'...
LFOD...
I’m not supporting abusive police — but the suggestion that urban gangs protect their community was just too bizarre to go unchallenged.
Though between the Bloods, Crips or 18th Street gangs or LAPD and LASD - I’ll support LASD and t LAPD. There are pitifully few LEOs in L A county — and legions of semi-barbaric criminals.
The gangs are bad guys of the worst order — and getting worse.
98% of my dealings with leo have been of the harrassment and enforcement of bad law order, Ive never really 'needed' a cop...
BTW, did you see this article ???
Sheesh...as if repairing the door really “fixes” the problem.
WRONG DOOR PING
They’re doing it so often, they need a “Wrong Doors Unit”?
Egads.
Don’t worry, that rumbling you hear is not an earthquake. It’s merely our Founding Fathers, spinning in their graves.
Already on it Mad.
k
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.