Sepulveda Blvd. Vice Patrols a Casualty of Redistricting

A successful police crackdown on prostitution along Sepulveda Boulevard has been put on hold, an unexpected result of last month’s City Council redistricting.

Councilman Joel Wachs, whose district was altered to include the area, says he cannot afford to use discretionary office funds to pay for the undercover task force as his predecessor in the area, Councilman Ernani Bernardi, had done.

Instead, Wachs said, he will use much of the money to pay for two new offices he has opened in Van Nuys and Tujunga in an effort to establish ties with his new constituents.

Although Wachs vowed to try to get the extra enforcement restored next year, business and homeowners groups had mixed feelings about the end of the prostitution crackdown, which police said put a significant dent in the area’s sex trade.

“To say, ‘OK, next year we’ll go at the problem’ is not a satisfactory answer,” said Mark Figearo, president of the Panorama City-Sepulveda Chamber of Commerce. “I don’t know Joel Wachs or what his situation is, but the problem has to be addressed now.”

“I felt they were pretty effective but they still didn’t eradicate the problem,” said Linda O’Connor, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. “As far as Joel Wachs, we’re getting to know him and I’m pleased by his expression of concern.”

The news came after a month in which Wachs has made several efforts to create a political base in his new district. Wachs, who will seek reelection next April, said his situation is difficult because he was thrust into representing thousands of new, diverse constituents who do not know him.

He has opened the two offices in Tujunga and Van Nuys and has spent much of this month touring the northern Valley with community groups, trying to sound out their needs. Monday, for example, Wachs visited a dead-end lot filled with abandoned cars, calling for a task force to recommend ways to get rid of them.

A meeting Wednesday with the Sunland-Tujunga Assn. of Residents centered on whether Wachs will continue the special police patrols initiated there by the late Councilman Howard Finn, who also used office funds to pay for them.

He said he would try.

Teams Were Effective

The added Van Nuys vice squads, teams of about 20 undercover officers who roamed Sepulveda Boulevard in search of prostitutes and their customers, accounted for more than 300 of the vice division’s 561 arrests so far this year, Sgt. Joseph Brazas said. In all of last year, the division made 401 such arrests.

The Police Department will draw resources from other areas if the prostitution problem becomes unmanageable, Deputy Police Chief Ron Frankle said. According to Brazas, the commanding officer of the Van Nuys vice unit, prostitution has resumed to a serious degree since the added squads’ last outing Sept. 26.

“Right now we’re just throwing a pebble out there or maybe putting one brick in the dam,” Brazas said, “and the dam needs to be built from the bottom up . . . It’s ridiculous.

Not Enough Officers

“We get the word from the girls who come from as far away as San Diego . . . that Van Nuys is the place to be,” Brazas said. “They know that the enforcement abilities of Van Nuys vice is not there. They’re not afraid of the black-and-whites that drive by because these officers are en route to calls for service. They don’t even flinch when a black-and-white goes by.”

The squads, consisting of police officers working overtime, had been paid for by Bernardi with leftover council discretionary expense funds. Each council member last year got about $525,000 for office expenses, most of which paid staff salaries.

Bernardi had allocated $82,000 of his leftover funds to prostitution enforcement on Sepulveda Boulevard and drug enforcement on Blythe Street, in an area Bernardi still represents.

Deputy Chief Frankle said about $27,000 of the money remains. He said the police are honoring Bernardi’s request to spend it on enforcement in his district, not on Sepulveda Boulevard. Bernardi, though, said all of the remaining money was to be spent on Blythe Street in the first place.

Wachs Vows to Find Funds

On Wednesday, Wachs sought to play down the pullback of the undercover vice squads and promised he would try to wrest money from next year’s budget to resurrect them and to maintain the extra summertime patrols in Sunland-Tujunga, which cost about $30,000.

“I’m going to fight to get it,” Wachs said. “I’m going to look at every possible source. I’m going to look at my office (budget) and I’m going to look at the department’s budget,” he said, referring to the police.

Wachs still maintains an office in Studio City that is a few blocks outside his new district. He said he still represents about 20,000 people in that area and hopes to share the office with Councilman Michael Woo by next year.

But Woo’s chief deputy, Larry Kaplan, said, “We suggested the possibility of sharing, and they weren’t receptive.” He said Woo agreed to let Wachs stay in the office “to be nice” and is seeking a temporary office for now.