Residents Castigate Council, Claim Police Being Shortchanged

Susan Tully’s voice trembled as she told of a recent gun battle on her block near downtown Santa Ana.

“It was about 6 p.m . . . broad daylight . . . and my four children were playing in our front yard,” Tully told City Council members. “Gunshots rang out, the gang members went north and they went south. Four of them ran past my house while my children were doing cartwheels, and they were six feet away, firing guns over their shoulders, and cross fire was coming back from the north.

“No one was caught,” continued Tully. “My 9-year-old daughter looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘Mommy, I don’t think I can play in the front yard anymore.’ ”

Tully, who is president of Santa Ana Neighbors for Excellence and is active in efforts to preserve the city’s older neighborhoods, was one of 14 residents who attacked the City Council on Monday night for not providing enough police protection.

A crowd of about 300--police officers and their families as well as residents who belong to neighborhood groups such as SANE, SAMSON (Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors) and COP (Community Oriented Policing)--crammed into the council chambers in a show of support for police officers.

Raucous Cheering

The council earlier that day had unilaterally imposed a 4.5% pay raise on the officers, whose union had asked for a 7.5% increase both this year and next. Contract negotiations had stretched for nearly a year without success before Monday’s council action.

For more than an hour late Monday night, residents filed up to the microphone and, backed by raucous cheering and applause, castigated the council and City Manager David N. Ream for a variety of offenses, foremost among them their failure to combat the city’s high crime rate by paying police more and hiring more of them.

“If it was up to me, and I know there are many others in this city who believe as I do, at least two of you deserve prison time for what you’ve been doing these past number of years to our city,” said SAMSON president Harry Greenberg, declining to identify the two. As for Ream, Greenberg said, “he’s anti-police, he’s arrogant, and he’s financially irresponsible, and the majority of this council supports him.”

Most of the council members said nothing during the onslaught. When it was over, Mayor Dan Young offered to include the residents in discussions on the budget for the next fiscal year. He also said the city was ready to sit down “tomorrow” with the Police Benevolent Assn. and begin talks on a contract for next year (1988-89).

“What’s to sit down and meet about?” shouted Santa Ana Police Officer Chris Trinajstich from the crowd at that point. “The vote was 4 to 3 . . . to slam-dunk the contract. . . . Yes or no, sir?”

New Pay Scales

Trinajstich was referring to the council’s vote earlier that day, which imposed a 4.5% raise for officers retroactive to July 1, and an additional 2% raise for sergeants retroactive to Jan. 1. Officers will now earn a basic monthly salary of between $2,574 and $3,129, while sergeants will earn between $3,113 and $3,784. The vote does not affect negotiations for a contract for 1988-89.

PBA President Donald Blankenship said the 440-member union would not take any action until its wage negotiation team meets Thursday to discuss all possible options.

One of those options may be to challenge the city’s assertion that impasse procedures had been followed and that the PBA had waived its right to mediation.

According to a city resolution adopted in 1981, either party in a contract dispute may call for an impasse meeting if talks are hopelessly deadlocked. At the impasse meeting, each side lays out the issues that remain in dispute and may then submit those directly to the City Council for resolution or call in a state mediator.

City negotiators called for an impasse meeting on March 18 at City Hall, but the PBA wage team, which argued that an impasse did not exist and that good faith negotiations could still be useful, refused to show up for the meeting.

The PBA’s failure to attend the meeting and participate in the impasse resolution process allowed the city to submit the dispute directly to the City Council, City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said.

Council member Wilson B. Hart, who voted with the majority to impose the raise on the police union, said that he wishes that he could have given them a bigger raise but that the city could not afford it.

“We cannot liquidate the city so we can pay police more,” Hart said in an interview Tuesday. He also said, however, that the council should consider adding more patrol officers if that would allay residents’ concerns for their own safety.

“We’ve been in the business of restoring confidence in this city for the last decade, and what we heard last night was discouraging,” said Hart, a lawyer and former head of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. “If we cannot restore the confidence of the middle class in the future of this city--so that young families make plans to raise families here rather than move to Tustin--then we’ve failed in everything we’ve done.”

While dismissing the remarks of some of Monday night’s speakers as politically motivated, Hart said he took very seriously the fear expressed by Susan Tully, who he said “has no axes to grind.”

“She’s the kind of folks we’re working to recruit,” Hart said of the young mother, a code enforcement officer who is expecting another child. “To hear her tremulous voice and see her confidence shaken was very troubling.”