Overtime Plan May Put More Police on Streets

The number of Los Angeles police officers on the streets could grow by at least 200 as early as next week if the City Council approves a $3.7-million overtime pay plan endorsed unanimously Tuesday by its Finance and Review Committee.

That assessment was offered Tuesday by Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon, the Police Department’s director of operations. He said the additional overtime pay would be used immediately to pay for a series of “task force-type” actions involving officers who would volunteer to work extra hours at time-and-a-half pay.

Prostitutes, errant motorists and cruising teen-age drivers would be targeted by the overtime task forces, Vernon said. In addition, he said, the extra money would go toward a special 30-officer squad that would specifically combat the rising incidence of organized drug dealing among street gang members.

Following Tuesday’s committee hearing, Vernon said he is confident that the full council will approve the overtime plan next week.

“They’d be crazy not to. . . . We’re going to proceed as though it’s already been approved,” Vernon said. “Crime may not go down that significantly, but there’s going to be a presence, a feeling, of more police officers on the street. . . . We’re going to give this city a heavy dose of law enforcement.”

Facing budget restraints, the Police Department in recent years has stopped offering overtime pay to all but a few officers. Others are usually given compensatory time off instead.

In November, City Councilmen Ernani Bernardi and Joel Wachs proposed that the city freeze nearly 1,000 municipal job vacancies and use the estimated $10-million savings to help finance police overtime pay, with the goal of putting more officers on patrol. However, City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie later rejected the Bernardi-Wachs plan, saying in part that it would result in a “deterioration” of city property by reducing the number of maintenance workers for garbage trucks and office buildings.

Instead, Comrie’s proposal, endorsed by the council’s committee on Tuesday, would use $2.5 million in projected salary savings from 165 vacant police positions to pay additional overtime pay to officers already employed. By not filling the vacant positions, the city could save another $1.2 million that would otherwise go toward Los Angeles’ fire and police pension system.

The combined $3.7 million could finance about 90 police officers working eight hours a day each month for the next six months, Comrie pointed out.

However, on Tuesday, Vernon said the department hopes to make a more dramatic, short-term impact on the streets, putting at least 200 and perhaps as many as 300 extra officers on duty at any one time. With such a deployment, the overtime funds would last about 2 1/2 months, he estimated.