L.A. Officials Plan to Hire 1,000 New Officers by 2010

[Christina Marie]

L.A. Officials Plan to Hire 1,000 New Officers by 2010


Updated: July 14th, 2006 01:41 PM EDT

RICK ORLOV and BETH BARRETT
The Daily News of Los Angeles



Warning that costs will escalate, Los Angeles officials vowed Wednesday to push LAPD reforms and hire more officers in the wake of an independent report that said the city is at a crossroads in providing modern police services.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and key City Council members said the ``Rampart Reconsidered'' report by a panel headed by civil-rights attorney Connie Rice highlights a problem that the city has started trying to resolve but that will require more spending in the future.

``We have said that Los Angeles is the most underpoliced big city in the nation,'' Villaraigosa said. ``But this city is making the commitment to hire more officers, and I think the public recognizes that it will take an investment to make our streets safe.''

Villaraigosa and the City Council this year approved a trash-fee increase -- $7 a month this year, rising to $28 a month in four years -- that would raise $127 million by 2010 to hire 1,000 more police officers.

``That has to just be the start,'' Villaraigosa said. ``If I'm elected to a second term or whoever the next mayor is, they are going to have to deal with providing the money to hire even more officers.''

But the mayor said he is not prepared to join with Sheriff Lee Baca in asking voters to again increase the sales tax to help law enforcement.

``I don't think this is the time to do that,'' Villaraigosa said. ``We, here, have provided the funding we need for more officers and we should concentrate on that.''

But Rice said police and city leaders will miss the point if they focus solely on funding and ``incremental changes,'' such as adding more police, rather than address a ``paradigm'' shift needed to fundamentally change the way the Los Angeles Police Department operates.

``It's much bigger than the number of cops,'' Rice said. ``It's problematic, because it misses the bigger challenge.''

The bigger issue, she said, is whether the city is willing to adopt a new mind-set and more from a ``thin blue line'' paramilitary model of dealing with crime to a more community-oriented, problem-solving approach modeled on reforms at the Rampart Division.

``We have to throw fear to the wind,'' Rice said. ``When you talk to the voters, they have real common sense if you can show them performance, transparency and competence, and they'll invest in solving the problem. But when it's business as usual, (they see it as) throwing money down a rathole.''

And while Villaraigosa is key to leading the public safety debate, she said Chief William Bratton, Baca and rank-and-file officers will need to lead much of the charge.

Rice said city residents, particularly in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, also need to ``get in the boat and row.''

``The voters of Los Angeles have to stop the selfishness,'' she said. ``If we continue to allow it for 50 years, ... we'll be headed down the road to Rio de Janeiro, where you can't even enter the slums.''

Bratton declined to comment on the report until after the Police Commission is briefed by Rice today.

The report found that seven years after the Rafael Perez scandal rocked the LAPD, the Rampart Division has become transformed into a model of modern policing, but that city leaders have failed to take critical steps to prevent future breakdowns.

The report on the 1999 scandal that grew out of cover-ups and crimes by former Rampart anti-gang officers said L.A.'s civic culture has resisted facing core social and policing problems for decades and remains the biggest obstacle to progress.

It also said the Los Angeles Police Department remains an ``upside down'' department that puts its least-experienced and lowest-paid personnel on the front lines, lacks adequate resources and still has a widespread culture of ``warrior policing.''

And it accused city officials of paying little attention to long-term problem-solving and called on civic organizations and neighborhood groups to take more responsibility for tackling the social problems that breed ``cultures of destruction.''

While the mayor said he would not embrace some of the rhetoric of the report, he agreed that more needs to be done and said steps are being taken to institute change.

``Everyone in the city -- the City Council, the mayor, the police chief, the Police Commission -- believes in reforming how the department operates,'' Villaraigosa said. ``But it is going to take an investment, one that we are making.

``For 40 years, we did not make the investment in our city that we needed to do to make it safe. I think the public recognizes we need to do this now.''

Villaraigosa said the city needs to deal with the root issues of crime -- the hopelessness of poverty, the lack of a good education, the need to provide alternatives to a life of crime and gangs.

Referring to the recent shooting death of three youths in South Los Angeles, Villaraigosa said he could make a prediction about the background of the killers. ``I can tell you they are probably dropouts or undereducated,'' Villaraigosa said. ``That's why improving education is so important.''

Councilman Jack Weiss, who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee, said he believes that the report's findings are significant and validate the move to hire more police officers.

Councilman Dennis Zine, a former police officer, said he was encouraged by the improvements Rice had seen in the department. ``This is a woman who knows the department as well as anyone and for her to say there have been improvements, it's a significant step forward,'' Zine said.

But some, including Councilman Bernard Parks, who was police chief when the Rampart scandal erupted, questioned whether the report dug deeply enough. ``It seems like they talked to a lot of police officers, but not many members of the public who the department is supposed to serve. They went to the people who were responsible for the problems and not those who have to live with it.''

Parks also cautioned against the optimistic view that crime is being controlled in the MacArthur Park area. ``Things are better now, but it is a matter of sustaining our effort. We cannot declare victory and move on,'' he said. ``We are going to have to stay there for a long time.''

The report, requested by Bratton, is to be formally presented to the Police Commission at a special meeting today. It is then expected to go to the full City Council for review.

rick.orlov@dailynews.com

http://www.officer.com/article/article. ... eSection=1

[chupon106]

1000 more cops?? thats gonna suck for ppl in LA. im not a big fan of puercos