How Many Police Officers Do We Need in L.A.?

There is an enormously important issue to be resolved by the citizens of Los Angeles and their elected leadership: Is the kind of police service they enjoyed during the 1984 Olympic Games worth a few dollars to maintain?

Providing safety to people is the government’s first obligation. Public safety is not dependent solely upon the number of police officers. Quality of personnel and equipment is far more important than hordes of uniformed bodies. Still, numbers are a factor even though a single magic number has never been precisely determined.

In 1985, adequate police service cannot be provided to more than 3 million people, in a 465-square-mile area, with 7,000 police officers. On that, all experts agree. Chicago, for example, has fewer people and far fewer square miles. That city has nearly twice the number of police officers as Los Angeles.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s article (Editorial Pages, Feb. 18) seemed to say that we do not need more than the 7,000 officers we now have. Fine councilman that he is, in his article Ernie demonstrated why he is not a recognized expert in providing police services.

The councilman questioned the effectiveness of the department’s current enforcement practices by comparing 1960 personnel and arrest data to 1983. According to his data, “In 1960 we had 4,730 officers who made 269,000 arrests. In 1983 we had 6,903 officers, and arrests dropped to 192,000.” Whoever compiled those statistics made a monumental error as well as a very careless oversight. For 1960, that analyst counted booking charges (269,000) rather than arrestees (194,172). The Los Angeles Police Department’s 1960 Statistical Digest shows that in 1960 there were 172,974 adults and 21,198 juveniles arrested in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Statistical Digest for 1983 shows that 186,325 adults and 20,752 juveniles were arrested. That adds up to 207,077 arrests; not 192,000 as reported in the article. Where the article reported 77,000 fewer arrests in 1983 than in 1960, factual data reveals there were 12,905 more arrests in 1983.

Not only were there more arrests 1983 than in 1960, the differences in the kinds of arrests are worthy of note. Sweeping changes in public drunkenness laws (the Sundance decision) and elimination of vagrancy laws accounted for drastic reductions in the number of arrests for those offenses. For example, in 1960 there were 91,072 arrests for drunkenness and 3,707 arrests for vagrancy. In 1983 there were 5,921 adults arrested for drunkenness and no arrests for vagrancy.

Excluding arrests for drunkenness and vagrancy, in 1960 there were 99,393 arrests; in 1983 there were 201,156, an increase of over 100%. Caring for public inebriates still consumes a tremendous amount of patrol officers’ time. Far more inebriates are transported to detoxification centers than are arrested. Councilman Bernardi should be lauding his police officers rather than questioning their efficiency.

Next, the article referenced a totally discredited 1974 Police Foundation study on police deployment that has never had any relevance to the City of Los Angeles. But there was an attempt to make it relevant by comparing the number of officers policing the Central City’s business and industrial district to only the number of people who reside in that district. Such logic ignores the hundreds of thousands of people who work, shop or visit in downtown Los Angeles daily. Their density, transiency and engagement in dynamic commerce create much more of a police burden than is created by a high density, stable residential community.

Also presented in the article is an arbitrary formula for increasing the ratio of one-officer to two-officer patrol cars. This time, no Police Foundation study was referenced. There should have been. A Police Foundation study was conducted in San Diego in 1977. A similar study was conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1982. The studies complement and support each other. They show that the current deployment of one-officer patrol cars within the City of Los Angeles provides the maximum utilization of these units without sacrificing officer safety, productivity, or cost effectiveness.

Perhaps the most telling refutation of Councilman Bernardi’s argument that more police will not make a difference comes from the councilman himself. In 1981 he made a motion in City Council, which was approved, to transfer $84,000 from his district budget to the LAPD budget to provide an additional 24-hour patrol car in his district. His motion stated that, “supplemental police patroling in selected high crime areas in the 7th Council District indicate that substantial success in suppressing serious crime is possible.”

While my message to Los Angeles is that we badly need more officers, I have not voiced a preference for any of the proposed funding methods. One reason for not doing so is that the method of funding has become a political issue. Not being a politician, I will continue to avoid voicing a political preference. But, as politicians argue the issue, I will publicly correct anyone’s inaccurate comments about the Police Department.

DARYL F. GATES

Chief of Police

Los Angeles