Bradley Blamed for L.A. Police Cutbacks

Gov. George Deukmejian, continuing to press Mayor Tom Bradley on reductions in authorized police personnel in Los Angeles, said the mayor “had to know going in” that city voters would reject a special tax to hire more officers.

The governor used the backdrop of cranes and earthmovers at a Kern County jail construction site to dramatize his campaign-like swipe at Bradley, who is expected to challenge Deukmejian for the governorship next year.

Bradley spokesmen, reacting to the governor’s criticism that the city is short of police personnel at a time when the public is clamoring for stronger law enforcement, have pointed to the mayor’s support of a June 4 special election tax increase proposal.

“He had to know going in that the people were not going to support a property tax increase to provide for additional police personnel,” Deukmejian told reporters at the construction site, where workers are pouring the foundation for a $26-million, 576-bed jail expected to be finished at the end of 1986.

The governor said the election “wasn’t the answer” because of voter opposition to higher taxes.

“The answer is that you take those revenues that are coming in and you set priorities and you give top priority to providing more and adequate law enforcement personnel within that community,” the governor said.

Bradley was in Chile on a trade mission for the Harbor Department and not available for comment.

Deputy Mayor Tom Houston said the drop-off in authorized police positions stemmed from cutbacks developing as the result of passage of a tax-cut initiative, Proposition 13, in 1978. He said the police force was down 260 positions. But, he said, as a result of shifting desk officers to the field, the actual number of patrol officers was up 5%.

On another issue, Houston said the mayor does not intend to retreat from his earlier characterizations that Deukmejian’s prison program is in “total disarray” and “a joke.”

Deukmejian accused Bradley in San Francisco on Wednesday of misstating facts and “completely falsifying information.”

The charge stemmed from comments Bradley made about Deukmejian’s prison program plus the mayor’s contention, based on a report in The Times, that the governor planned to turn a California Conservation Corps facility in the San Fernando Valley into a prison. The governor wrote Bradley a letter denying the charge, but the mayor continued to make the claims, according to Deukmejian.

Houston said it seemed the governor was directing criticism at local officials to deflect attention from his failure to cut into the problem of overcrowding in state prisons.

Deukmejian criticized Bradley in San Francisco and again in Bakersfield for not helping the state develop a prison construction site in downtown Los Angeles.

‘It’s Their Program’

Houston replied: “The governor has got to get his prison construction program going. He can’t point the finger at local officials. We have a governor who supposedly runs the state and a Department of Corrections responsible for siting prisons. It’s their program.”

More than 4,000 permanent and temporary prison beds have been added to the state penal system since Deukmejian took over as governor in 1983, but officials say at least 15,000 to 16,000 beds are needed to relieve the overcrowding problem.

Deukmejian has been talking in speeches about the prison beds he has added and the hard-nosed judges he is appointing to the courts.

C LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT