Farrell Has a Surprise for Police Tax Critics

It was ballyhooed as a conciliatory event. Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell would join some of the fiercest critics of his police tax plan on Thursday at a City Hall press conference, presumably to bury the controversy over Proposition 7.

Farrell, who authored the June 2 ballot proposition to levy more taxes for more police in South-Central Los Angeles, was expected to abandon support for the measure after the City Council agreed Wednesday to designate funds for 250 more police officers citywide as part of the $2.46-billion city budget.

The South-Central Organizing Committee, which had led the opposition to the tax plan and which was Farrell’s most vocal critic, had gone so far as to distribute a statement, in anticipation of the news conference, lauding Farrell as a politician who “admits he made a mistake.”

Will Call Him ‘Chicken’

But things unraveled quickly. Word spread that Farrell would come not to bury Proposition 7 but to praise it.

“If he can’t come here and meet with us, we’re going to call him the chicken that he is,” said an angry Frances James of the South-Central committee as the phalanx of reporters, photographers and camera operators filed out of a press room at City Hall after Farrell failed to show up.

Instead, the councilman’s staff summoned reporters to his smaller City Hall office--where there was not enough room for his detractors. There, Farrell admitted that he was not abandoning the proposition altogether.

Will Vote for Tax

Announcing that he would no longer campaign actively nor spend money on behalf of Proposition 7, Farrell nonetheless said that he would personally vote for the tax and hoped that others would follow suit. He added that even if the police tax is rejected at the polls on June 2, he may revive the proposal if the mayor and City Council do not maintain their support for more police officers in future years.

“The goal is to get more police. I achieved my goal,” Farrell said of the council’s budget vote on Wednesday.

At his side, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates was even more adamant.

“I wish I could go on every pulpit, every street corner in South-Central Los Angeles and I would say over and over again: “Vote for it. It’s a great opportunity.” Gates said.

Those statements drew a fiery response from the South-Central Organizing Committee members who could be heard chanting in the hallways during the Farrell news conference and who immediately accused the councilman of reneging on a promise he made to abandon the measure altogether if the council approved the additional police.

“We’re saying that he out and out lied to the people of South-Central Los Angeles,” James said.

The confusion over Farrell’s stance came after the police tax issue appeared all but dead.

The unprecedented measure, which Farrell pushed to get on the city ballot, would tax residents of high-crime areas served by four police divisions--Newton, Southwest, Southeast and 77th Street--to pay for 300 more officers for those largely black communities.

But with the passage of the city budget and the unanimous council vote to add more police officers citywide, Farrell had claimed victory on the issue and had indicated earlier to reporters and others that the proposal was no longer needed.

At his news conference, Farrell said he felt that way until some of the earlier supporters of the tax plan, including some clergymen in the community, persuaded him not to totally scuttle the proposal.

As for the critics of the tax plan, they vowed to fight the ballot measure.