Pitch for Funds for Drug-Abuse Manual Is Bashed by Police

The way the man on the telephone explained it, the money he was asking for would support some very important work. It might even save some lives.

For $2,500, the man said, the owner of the Westside ice cream shop could purchase a full-page, color advertisement in an as-yet-unpublished drug-abuse and gang-awareness manual for parents. The man said the publication was being sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Assn., the shop owner recalled, and 15% of the proceeds would go directly to the association’s charity fund.

But the pitch had three problems. There is no Los Angeles Police Assn. The man was soliciting a Los Angeles businessman without benefit of the permits required by the city’s Municipal Code. And the businessman was an undercover investigator for the Los Angeles Police Commission, who had been tipped off to the solicitation by the store’s real manager.

The operators of the Santa Monica telephone bank where the pitch originated were ordered by investigators Tuesday to stop asking for money within the city of Los Angeles, which has two stiff ordinances that regulate solicitations on behalf of police organizations and charities. Santa Monica has no similar ordinances, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office said.

Posed as Owner

Detective R.K. Rudell of the Los Angeles Police Department, who posed as the shop owner, said he will ask the city attorney’s office to file misdemeanor charges against those who allegedly violated the ordinances.

Among those under investigation, Rudell said, are Stuart-Bradley Productions Inc., a Nevada corporation that has offices in Walnut Creek, Calif., and plans to publish the drug manual, and Community Awareness, the organization that operates the telephone bank in an office at 2714 Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica.

The drug manual project actually is intended to benefit the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Officers Assn., which signed a contract with Stuart-Bradley last November, the association’s vice president, Stan Kennedy, said Tuesday.

Kennedy said he and association President Richard Keith on Tuesday directed the association’s attorney to cancel the 215-member group’s contract with the publisher.

“They were supposed to meet with us and go over exactly what they were supposed to say, and they didn’t,” Kennedy said, adding that he was unaware that Stuart-Bradley had begun soliciting advertising for the manual.

“There were two things we specifically addressed with them,” Kennedy said. “We wouldn’t allow themselves to represent themselves as police officers, and they had to make it clear they were representing the school police, not the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Stuart-Bradley officials were not available for comment.

Stopped Soliciting

Stanley R. Cantor, who supervises the Community Awareness telephone bank, said Tuesday that his organization immediately stopped all soliciting for the school police group after detectives arrived Tuesday morning.

He said his group has been seeking advertising for the manual for about three weeks but declined to say how much money had been raised.

A similar manual published last year for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Assn. ran to 528 pages. Rudell’s partner, Detective James Brady, estimated that the advertising occupied about 65% of the space.

Cantor acknowledged that the telephone bank solicitors are paid a percentage of the money they raise. A “runner” dispatched to the ice cream shop told Rudell that he is paid 4% of the money that he brings back to the office. But Cantor refused to discuss the details of the financial arrangements involved in the drug and gang manual project.

“I don’t want to get into all that, because I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said.

Cantor said his solicitors carefully follow a script in which they make sure to identify the sponsor of the manual as the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department, not the Los Angeles Police Assn.

His organization is reputable, Cantor said, not a transient “boiler room.” He said it also solicits advertising in Santa Monica for another manual, this one on the subject of child abuse, which is sponsored by the Santa Monica Police Officers Assn.

“We work on different crime prevention subjects that are needed in the community to help save some kids’ lives,” Cantor said.

“I don’t think we were treated fairly on this whole thing. It was kind of a set-up thing,” he added. “It’s strictly an error in licensing, that’s what it is. There’s no misrepresentation at all.”

But Rudell, in his official report on the incident, wrote that the solicitor who pitched him during a telephone call on Monday made several references to the “Los Angeles Police Assn.” and did not mention the school police.

When a man arrived at the ice cream shop Tuesday morning and asked Cantor to make out his $2,500 check to the school police organization, he insisted that the Los Angeles school police are a unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, Rudell said.

Protect Consumer

The city ordinances that require registration of those soliciting for charities and on behalf of police organizations were enacted to protect the consumer, Rudell said.

“The disclosure is to advise citizens that their money is not actually going to the Police Department, it’s going to a (private police officers’) organization, and only a certain percentage of their money, a very small amount, goes to the organization,” he said. “Most of it goes to the solicitors.”