Despite Rhetoric, Ferraro and Bradley Are Often in Agreement on Police Funds

Despite their campaign rhetoric, Mayor Tom Bradley and his principal reelection opponent, Councilman John Ferraro, have agreed more often than not about how money should be spent by the Los Angeles Police Department.

In fact, Ferraro has in the last 11 years voted only once against city budgets that for the most part have borne the Bradley imprint.

At the same time, however, since Bradley took office in 1973, Ferraro has staked out clearly opposite positions on many fundamental policy issues. The essence of that difference can be characterized simply: Ferraro has wanted more money for the Police Department than Bradley has been willing to provide.

The Times reviewed Ferraro’s voting record and Bradley’s budget proposals beginning with 1974, Bradley’s first budget year.

The Ferraro-Bradley differences over police spending, according to The Times’ review of more than 150 City Council budget votes, ranged from the seemingly insignificant to the more controversial. The mayor and Ferraro were, in some years, at odds over issues as hotly debated as financing the now-disbanded Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID) or as trivial as whether to subsidize the police band’s director.

The record also indicates that on budget-related issues pitting Bradley against the police chief--first Edward M. Davis and now Daryl F. Gates--Ferraro tended to line up with the chief.

The record reflects, as well, longstanding philosophical differences between the two men over management of the Police Department. Bradley favors active control of the department by his civilian appointees on the Police Commission. Ferraro, who served from 1953 to 1966 as a police commissioner, embraces a laissez-faire approach in which the police chief is given wider discretion in running his department.

For example, Ferraro supported Gates when the chief objected to a reorganization plan backed by Bradley that has led to nearly 175 sworn officer positions being either deleted, downgraded or turned over to civilians. The councilman also was a strong supporter of the PDID even after embarrassing disclosures that PDID officers had been spying on law-abiding citizens. Bradley criticized the intelligence division, and the Police Commission eventually disbanded it.

Ferraro, waging an uphill campaign to spoil Bradley’s bid for a fourth term, has concentrated most of his effort so far on convincing voters that he is the cop’s best friend in the mayor’s race.

Ferraro is trying to portray the mayor as hostile to the Police Department’s needs and citing as evidence the reduction of the police force by more than 500 officers since 1973.

Hoping to appeal to more conservative voters, Ferraro has blamed the Police Department reductions for rising crime statistics, low police morale and a feeling within the community that it is unsafe to go outdoors.

The mayor has angrily countered that, as a former police lieutenant, he is not only sensitive to the department’s fiscal needs, but also has been aggressive in eliminating waste in the department so that more police officers can be put on patrol duty.

Bradley has also said that while libraries and park facilities budgets have been drastically reduced since Proposition 13 was passed, the Police Department spending program has been spared wherever possible.

Bradley conceded in an interview that he and Ferraro have differed. But he said that Ferraro has supported many of the same reductions that the councilman is now charging have led to a decimation of the police force.

“I believed that you need to put police officers on the streets, in the neighborhood, doing police work, not performing some function, whether it’s PR . . . or the band or the motorcycle drill team,” Bradley said.

“Those kinds of things might be nice if you’ve got a lot of money. When you’re strapped and you’re cutting other departments to the bone, you cannot justify them, and I would not.”

Ferraro disagreed.

“There’s a morale factor,” he said. “If the Police Department feels they’re being shortchanged or neglected by the city fathers or the mayor, the attitude could be: ‘The hell with it. Why should I break my neck to do this or do that when there’s no appreciation?’

“There hasn’t been a hell of a lot of appreciation from the council and the mayor toward the Police Department.”

An examination of city budget documents over the last 11 years supports--to a degree--the campaign claims of both candidates. Ferraro has, as he claims, backed additional funding for police programs, while Bradley has proposed reductions. Bradley, meanwhile, has proposed what he views as reductions that have trimmed departmental fat while at the same time maintaining patrol levels during hard economic times.

But the record also shows that Ferraro and Bradley--despite their differences--agreed more than 58% of the time on how much money the Police Department should be given. Ferraro, who has gained a reputation on the City Council as a team player, voted only once--in 1976--against the city budget.

And since Bradley became mayor, the number of years in which Ferraro agreed with the mayor over police spending outnumber those years in which he disagreed by a 7-4 margin. During two years, in 1981 and last year, the two mayoral rivals did not differ on any police issues that came before the council for a vote.

Also shown in the 11-year police budget record:

Of 35 Bradley vetoes issued against police spending matters, Ferraro voted 28 times to overturn the mayor and seven times to support him. Of the 28 override attempts supported by Ferraro, 18 were successful.

Although Ferraro is portraying himself as one of the council’s staunchest supporters of the Police Department, he rarely sponsored legislation to beef up the department and on the few occasions he did, he had only spotty success.

Ferraro voted more than three dozen times either to cut money from the Police Department’s budget or against adding new funds. In only three of those cases was he in disagreement with Bradley.

Ferraro supported 26 motions to add money to the Police Department, motions on which he disagreed with Bradley. Only four passed. The councilman had more luck when he supported additions with which he and the mayor were in accord. All 21 of those passed.

The Bradley-Ferraro record of conflict over police spending began in 1974, soon after the new mayor submitted his first spending proposals to the City Council. Bradley proposed enough money to recruit 500 more police officers, and Ferraro voted to add 410 officers on top of that. Bradley vetoed the addition and Ferraro voted to override, but the mayor emerged the winner.

The differences continue to the present, with Bradley endorsing a controversial ballot measure to raise property taxes to pay for 1,300 new police officer positions and Ferraro arguing that new officers can be hired without new taxes.

Between that first budget year and now, the mayor and Ferraro disagreed on police spending issues involving PDID, moving civilians into posts traditionally held by uniformed officers, community relations officers, paying salaries of police union leaders, the police band and foot patrols. Bradley contended that the city could no longer afford or, in some cases, should not fund, programs that had traditionally been underwritten by the taxpayers.

Ferraro initially voted for many of the police allocations that Bradley was cutting. But when Proposition 13 passed and drastically reduced city property tax revenue, Ferraro was forced to go along with some of the reductions.

Since 1980, when the city first began to feel the effects of Proposition 13, the differences between Bradley and Ferraro over police spending have--according to the budget record anyway--virtually disappeared. In 1980, 1981 and again last year, the council made only minor changes in Bradley’s proposed police budget, and the mayor did not veto any of those changes.

In 1982 and 1983, Bradley vetoed only three additions to the police budget. Ferraro voted to override all three vetoes. But the mayor’s view was upheld on two of them.

The last time Ferraro introduced a budget motion involving the Police Department was in 1982. In that year, he sponsored two additions totaling $464,000 aimed at saving 13 attendant jobs at the police garage and preventing the shifting of several positions at two bureaus from sworn officers to civilians. Both motions were defeated soundly.

In the only other motion Ferraro sponsored during the last 11 years to boost police resources, he had more success. That was in 1980 when he introduced a motion for a new jet helicopter for the department’s fleet. Bradley went along with the change.