10th District Council Candidates Oppose Bradley Effort to Avoid Police Overtime

Mayor Tom Bradley’s futile efforts to dissuade the Los Angeles City Council from spending $4.3 million on overtime costs for additional police officers got little support Wednesday in his home district where crime remains a major issue in the April 14 election.

Most of the candidates in the crowded field running for the vacant council seat there sided with City Council members who spurned the mayor’s advice and unanimously voted Tuesday to transfer money to the Police Department from the overtime budgets of other city departments.

In authorizing enough overtime to place the equivalent of 190 more police officers on the streets over the next three months, the council swept aside warnings by Bradley and City Administrative Office Keith Comrie that the $4.3-million expenditure would further strain the city’s 1987-88 budget.

During a candidates forum and in later interviews, most of the candidates in the 10th District agreed with the council and indicated that they would have joined the 14-0 vote if they had been representing the district--which has been without a council member since David Cunningham resigned last October.

As a council member, Bradley once represented the southwest Los Angeles district. He still owns a house there, in which his eldest daughter, Lorraine, lives. Bradley lives at the home provided for the Los Angeles mayor, Getty House, located in Hancock Park in the 4th Council District.

Kenneth Orduna, among others in the field of 13 candidates, said he would have opposed the mayor.

“I would have been the 15th vote yesterday on the City Council to put more foot patrols back into the district and more overtime for the Police Department,” he told the audience of about 250 people.

Another candidate, Arthur Song Jr., said crime has forced district residents to live as “prisoners in our own home” and that combatting it has become the top priority of the council campaign.

Calling for better long-term solutions against crime, Song said that “throwing money at the Los Angeles Police Department” is not the answer. But Song told The Times that he would have voted for the police overtime package as a stopgap measure because crime has reached “epidemic proportions” in the district.

A similar stance was taken by candidates Myrlie Evers and Nate Holden, who called the measure a “temporary fix.”

Even Bradley’s candidate in the race, former public works Commissioner Homer Broome Jr., said that although the overtime program was “nothing more than a Band-Aid action” he would have departed from the mayor and voted with the council because the police program--which began earlier this year--has enjoyed enormous popular support.

“Here’s an opportunity to get some more police right now and make more arrests. How can you vote against that?” Broome asked.

Two candidates, Denise Fairchild and Esther Lofton, expressed reservations about the council action. Fairchild said the council should have studied the matter further before voting. Lofton said that extra police could prove “oppressive” to inner-city minority residents.