Gates Speaks Out on Deployment : Police Chief Chides 2 Complaining Community Groups

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, commenting on the volatile issue of police deployment, said the Police Department has been overly generous in assigning officers to South-Central Los Angeles.

If there has been an error, Gates told a meeting of Hollywood neighborhood groups Tuesday night, it has been in “deploying a greater balance” to South-Central Los Angeles. At the same time, Gates said that threats to public safety--such as drive-by gang shootings and narcotics trafficking--are “tougher” in that part of town than elsewhere in the city.

Gates made the remarks by way of chiding two politically potent community groups, United Neighborhoods Organization and the South-Central Organizing Committee, which have threatened not to support efforts by city officials to increase the size of the department unless more officers are deployed to South-Central and the Eastside.

Father Bryan Jones, executive vice president of the United Neighborhoods Organization, which operates in the largely Latino Eastside, said Wednesday in response to Gates’ comments that “it would be more constructive for the police chief to agree to an independent study of police deployment rather than say things that would pit one part of the city against another.”

Jones acknowledged that his group and the South-Central Organizing Committee, which works in heavily black inner-city neighborhoods, had issued a statement saying the groups would not be able to support a citywide campaign to raise taxes to pay for more police unless more officers are assigned to eastern and South-Central neighborhoods.

Up to now, the issue of deployment has been lying just beneath the surface of election year discussions among candidates for mayor and City Council over how best to increase the size of the Police Department.

Gates, who is not a candidate, stressed that his comments should not be interpreted as an endorsement of anyone currently running for office.

However, Gates, long a critic of Mayor Tom Bradley, who is running for reelection, reminded his audience that the size of the Police Department has decreased from 7,500 officers to 6,900 since 1978, during Bradley’s tenure.

Bradley, along with several members of the City Council, is working to develop a proposal for the June ballot that would authorize a property tax increase to pay for hiring 1,000 more police officers.

To succeed, the proposed tax increase, which would cost the average homeowner $58 a year, would need the support of two-thirds of the voters.

An aide to Councilman John Ferraro, who is running against Bradley, said Wednesday that Ferraro is about to announce a plan to increase the size of the department by 1,300 officers without raising taxes.

At a public City Hall hearing Wednesday, officials released more details of the plan backed by Bradley to hire 1,000 police officers.

At the hearing, City Councilwomen Joan Milke Flores and Peggy Stevenson said they will look for ways to use existing city funds to hire 500 officers.

The councilwomen want to explore alternatives to Bradley’s plan in case the council does not agree to put it on the ballot or the voters turn it down.

The annual cost to taxpayers of employing 1,000 more officers would be about $56 million, according to the city administrative office.

The revenue would be derived from assessments on building space and land area, a spokesman for the administrative office said.