By EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON

The Los Angeles Police Department faces one of the most daunting, nerve-wracking, and deadly challenges that any police force has faced: catching the Grim Sleeper serial killer.

Former LAPD chief William Bratton dealt with the challenge by setting up a special serial killer unit to nab the killer or killers. This didn’t result in any arrests. New LAPD Chief Charlie Beck now faces the same challenge.

The LAPD recently re-released a composite sketch, touted the $500,000 reward the city has put up for information leading to the capture of the killer, and announced that it will put even more police personnel into the hunt.

The Grim Sleeper has been a terror for South Los Angeles and an embarrassment for the department since the first body was discovered in 1985 in a back alley in South L.A.

In the years since then, the body count has jumped to at least a dozen. The victims have several things in common. They are mostly young. There are allegations that some of them engaged in prostitution and drug use. They are all poor or of marginal income. They are virtually all black women.

Despite the intense hunt for the killer, the LAPD has repeatedly hit a stonewall in the case.  The failure to crack the case has stirred apprehension and rage in South L.A.

Some families and community groups in South L.A. have charged that LAPD homicide investigators aren’t doing enough to track down the killer or killers. The victims in South L.A., they say, are not the type of women who reflexively ignite police and public outrage.

Citizens groups in Cleveland, Atlanta and East St. Louis have made the same charge that police were lax and indifferent in their investigations following a rash of serial killings in those cities. The frustration, anger and complaints are understandable in South L.A.

But the LAPD has never shoved the killings into its cold case files and forgotten them. They’ve taken the murders and the hunt for the killer or killers very seriously. This is more than simple professionalism for them; it’s also due to the very compelling need to stop further carnage and allay public concerns over personal safety. 

They have put countless personnel hours into tracking down leads, tips, and DNA samples. LAPD lab workers matched DNA from 2002 and 2003 killings with the evidence from the 1980s killings, swabbed every inmate in California prisons, and matched fingerprints at the scene with 100 million fingerprints on file nationwide. They have established hot lines, and a Grim Sleeper Web site that provides updated information on the progress of the investigation.

In February, CNN even got into the hunt. It established its own Web site with names, dates and details of the LAPD investigation.

Serial killings can’t be ignored no matter who the victims are. They are just too sensitive and emotional an issue. They stoke public fears and anger and the more bodies that pile up heighten the embarrassment to city officials.

Crime experts and law enforcement officials admit that serial killings are the toughest cases to crack. There are almost never any eyewitnesses, and there’s little to link the victims. Then there are the internal problems in the probes such as inadequate management of information, lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies, inadequate resources, and the longtime lags between the killings. More than a decade passed between the time the first series of killings in South L.A. happened in the 1980s and the next series of killings in early 2000.

The re-release of a sketch of the suspected killer and the widespread media attention it’s gotten again has refocused public attention on the killings.

Forums and community meetings have been held in South L.A. recently to keep pressure on the LAPD to intensify the investigation and to urge anyone with any information on the case to contact the police. The capture of the killer will bring some measure of closure to the grieving families of the victims, ease public fears in South L.A., and damp down suspicions that when the victims are poor and minority and have an unsavory past, their lives are less valued.

For the LAPD, the Grim Sleeper’s capture will close the book on the greatest challenge that it has faced.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book, “How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge” (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.