City Declares Crime Crisis, Asks State for $34 Million

In an attempt to capture a piece of the state budget windfall, Mayor Maureen O’Connor and the San Diego City Council declared Tuesday that a recent spate of drug- and gang-related shootings have created a “state of emergency,” and asked Gov. George Deukmejian to give the city $34 million to help quell the violence.

Deukmejian’s press secretary, questioning whether O’Connor’s unusual gambit was a publicity stunt, said such declarations are traditionally reserved for natural disasters, and he virtually guaranteed that the governor will reject the request out of hand.

“This is not the normal criterion under which the governor declares a state of emergency, and there are no plans for him to do so,” said press secretary Kevin Brett. “Unless some thing would change dramatically as far as our criteria for a state of emergency, it is highly unlikely” that Deukmejian will accede to the request.

Brett also said the governor “will weigh what is paramount to the mayor--the merits of the proposal or the desire for publicity.”

At an early-afternoon press conference, O’Connor, flanked by City Manager John Lockwood and an impassioned Police Chief Bob Burgreen, insisted that her call for 1.3% of the state’s new-found $2.5-billion surplus is a genuine plea for help in a situation that she believes is growing beyond city control.

“This is not a frivolous publicity stunt,” O’Connor said. “We are very serious in San Diego that we have a problem, and we would like our state government to help us.”

However, mayoral spokesman Paul Downey said O’Connor did not consult the city’s legislative delegation or the governor’s office before making the request. Copies of O’Connor’s letter were released to the delegation Tuesday, at the same time they were sent to the governor and given to the media.

O’Connor said she had talked with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos about her plan.

The request that the council declare an emergency, which is necessary before Deukmejian can declare one, also was made at the last minute. In order to even discuss the resolution, the council was required to declare that an emergency had developed during the past 72 hours so it could waive its rules and take up a matter that was not on its weekly agenda Tuesday.

Asked by reporters what had changed in the past three days, City Atty. John Witt replied that the mayor had returned home from her European vacation.

O’Connor’s call for a state of emergency declaration by the governor is not unprecedented. On March 31, 1988, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn asked Deukmejian to declare a state of emergency in South-Central Los Angeles because of the rate of “narcotics-related gang violence” and to send in two companies of National Guardsmen to assist police.

Deukmejian ignored the request, Hahn spokesman Lynn Sakamoto said.

The mayor’s call for state funding comes just 12 days after Lockwood released an extremely tight proposed 1989-90 city budget that would actually reduce police coverage slightly, despite the council’s long-held desire to expand the force.

Last month, O’Connor asked Bush Administration drug czar William Bennett to place San Diego on the list of cities targeted for federal help with drug problems.

Another city plan to construct its own pre-arraignment jail cells for misdemeanants ran into trouble when a Superior Court judge ruled in March that the city’s potential funding source, a half-cent increase in the sales tax approved by voters last June, was illegal.

At Tuesday’s news conference and in testimony to the City Council, Burgreen said his top spending priority with the state money would be a detention facility for the more than 100 people arrested every day for misdemeanors who are cited and then released because there is no room for them in the county’s critically crowded jails.

“Probably most important of all, we’re going to need a detention facility,” Burgreen said. “We are dealing with the same people over and over again. The time has come when people who deal in drugs be made to pay the penalty. There has to be a place to hold them.”

The state money also would be spent to build courtrooms and hire judges--expenditures under the jurisdiction of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors--as well as to hire more police and fund inner-city community organizations, Burgreen said.

Burgreen refused to release a preliminary budget he has devised that details how the $34 million would be spent.

Despite the creation March 31 of an 86-member Special Enforcement Division targeted at drug- and gang-related crimes, violence during the first four months of 1989 has increased over the same period in 1988.

There have been four murders in those two categories this year, one more than last year, said Cmdr. Cal Krosch, who heads the special detail. Drive-by shootings have increased from 32 last year to 43 this year, and the number of assaults with a deadly weapon has risen from 49 to 67, he said.

In the past 10 days, a woman who was pregnant with twins was killed when she was caught in a drive-by shooting, and a family of five was held hostage at knifepoint more than three hours. A woman was raped during that ordeal.

Still, the figures pale in contrast with Los Angeles, where more than 400 deaths were attributed to gang violence in 1988.

A Deukmejian Administration official who requested anonymity said the governor would be inundated with requests for money from Los Angeles and other cities if he granted O’Connor’s request.

O’Connor began the day’s series of unusual events by telefaxing a letter to Deukmejian asking him to declare “our recent rash of drug-related and gang-related drive-by shootings to be an emergency” and issue a grant of $34 million to help control “urban terrorists.”

Aides said the mayor developed the plan during her two-week vacation in Europe and, upon returning to City Hall on Monday, began to set in motion efforts to obtain the money. The plan relies on a state law allowing the governor to declare an emergency when a situation grows “beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment and facilities of the political subdivision.”

However, Brett noted that an emergency declaration by the governor merely allows the state to apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance.

By mid-afternoon, the plan was before the council, which unanimously endorsed the call for help amid warnings that $34 million is not nearly enough to solve the city’s woes.

Community groups attempting to grapple with the city’s drug and gang problems endorsed the attempt to garner state funds, saying they hope that much of the will be used for intervention programs instead of law enforcement.

“I think the No. 1 priority needs to be community education, community support programs and enrichment activities,” said Jean Colston, chairwoman of Mothers Against Gangs In our Communities (MAGIC), a Southeast San Diego anti-gang group.