Ticket Writers Wary of Asbestos in Building

Concerns over asbestos in the Hollywood headquarters of Los Angeles’ parking enforcement division resulted in a brief work stoppage Tuesday morning as officers and management debated whether to take roll call indoors or outdoors.

After a two-hour standstill, supervisors agreed to take roll call outdoors and sent the 6:30 a.m. shift of 17 parking officers on their morning rounds of ticket writing. Pay was not docked, said Kaye Beechum, the city’s parking enforcement manager.

Supervisors and city occupational safety officials maintain that the building at 6601 W. Santa Monica Boulevard is safe to occupy despite the discovery of asbestos hazards in the basement and a ground-floor room of the building last September.

“Officers just got fed up,” said one parking enforcement officer who declined to give his name. “We’re willing to work. We just don’t want to go inside the building.”

City supervisors in the Hollywood headquarters had tried to persuade the morning officers to come indoors since the dispute over roll call arose last Thursday. Management resorted to direct orders Tuesday “because the building is safe,” Beechum said.

Supervisors intend to take roll call inside the building today, Beechum said. Management is hopeful that another round of tests for asbestos fiber in the air will persuade officers that the hazard, if any, is limited to the basement and ground-floor room. Those rooms are now off-limits, posted with signs that read “Danger” and note the risk of cancer and lung disease from asbestos fibers.

“When people see a sign like this, they tend to get nervous,” said Kenneth P. Sobel, chief of the city’s occupational safety office.

Sobel and an inspector installed two air sampling pumps in the building Tuesday morning to repeat earlier tests that he said had found no asbestos fibers in the building’s air, including the rooms posted as off-limits. Those rooms were declared off-limits to avoid the possibility of a disturbance that might cause asbestos dust, Sobel said.