Panel Unmoved by Plea for Foot Patrols
Community activists failed on Monday in a second attempt to revive support for the $2.5-million police foot patrol program vetoed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley 10 days ago.
“I’m 38 years old and I feel highly threatened,” Beverly Christianson, a Koreatown resident, said at a meeting of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. “I feel like a child myself that I have to sit here and plead with you. . . . I’m real. I’m not a robot. I don’t take bullets.”
Christianson and two other residents of the Koreatown area who spoke at the meeting had hoped to persuade the committee to endorse a measure calling for an override of the mayor’s veto.
No formal vote was taken, but Councilman Richard Alatorre said he would recommend that the veto be upheld by the full council. No date for that vote has been set.
In his veto, Bradley urged the council to support a $750,000 pilot program to be funded by surplus police salary funds.
Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, who attended the meeting Monday, said the surplus salary account money has already been earmarked for other police expenses.
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