Funds Would Expand LAPD : Bradley Asks Businesses to Tout Tax Plan

In his first speech on the issue, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley asked about two dozen San Fernando Valley business executives Wednesday to help him seek community support for a property tax that would add 1,000 officers to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Seeking to defuse the controversy that arose when nine officers were transferred from the Valley to South-Central Los Angeles, Bradley assured the executives that all areas of the city would get more officers if the plan passes. The measure would raise the department’s authorized strength to 8,000 officers.

“We will ensure--guarantee--that every region of the city will get an increase in the number of officers assigned there,” Bradley said at a breakfast gathering of executives at Warner Center in Woodland Hills.

Transfers Called ‘Political’ Officers were taken from throughout the city to work on a special 20-officer task force in the high-crime Nickerson Gardens area, but many Valley residents decried the transfers as “political” and declared that the Valley was being shortchanged.

Bradley, who is fighting criticism from his mayoral opponent, City Councilman John Ferraro, that he has not supported the Police Department, repeatedly emphasized that Police Chief Daryl Gates and other top-ranking officials had responsibility for planning the transfers.

He defended the transfers, saying, “The Police Department has been using special task forces as long as I can remember.” For instance, each summer, 30 officers are taken from throughout the city to patrol the oceanfront community of Venice during crowded summer months, Bradley said.

Not ‘Something New’ “Now is this something new? Is this some political scheme? Absolutely not. No one has raised any question about this type of task force deployment until now. What did it mean in terms of the San Fernando Valley? The highest number of officers taken from each division was two. Did that have an impact? Absolutely not.”

Bradley said the protests “can be divisive. I think it can pit one side of the city against another.”

Bradley said the new proposal is more equitable than the so-called 8,500 plan, a 1981 tax plan that would have increased the police force to 8,500 officers. That measure, which was soundly defeated in the Valley, failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority.

If approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the new measure would be placed on the June ballot and would also require a two-thirds majority to pass.

“The 8,500 plan did not have adequate support because it did have a number of defects,” Bradley said. For instance, he said, under that plan, the owner of a vacant lot would be charged the same tax as the owner of a 40-story building. Under the new plan, improved lots will be assessed at a higher rate, Bradley said.

The mayor said the new tax would cost homeowners an average of $4.83 a month, commercial property owners an average of $20 a month and industrial property owners $30 a month.

The officers would be distributed according to the department’s deployment formula, which is now under review. The formula has been attacked as unfairly benefiting affluent Valley and West Side areas at the expense of poorer sections of the city with more violent crime.

Bradley’s speech was greeted with polite applause. Although several executives said they supported the tax in concept, some were not yet convinced.