Long Beach Officials, Businessmen Get Security Tips at Police Seminar : Law Enforcement: The one-evening event is praised by those who attended but is criticized by some as ‘elitist.’

The evening fare included hot dogs and hamburgers, a SWAT team demonstration and tips on mail bombs and kidnapings.

The guests were public officials and business executives, gathered at the Long Beach Police Academy for a first-ever Executive Protection Seminar conducted by the Police Department earlier this year.

Harbor Commissioner George Talin fired a gun for the first time since 1954, Councilman Clarence Smith got lessons in home security and Harbor Bank Chief Executive Officer Jim Gray brushed up on the do’s and don’ts of hostage situations.

“I’d do it again,” said Talin, who hung his bullet-torn target in his office for several weeks after he pumped it full of holes at the firing range.

The one-evening seminar, held in February, has been praised by those who attended, criticized by some who did not and defended by the police administration as a logical extension of the department’s crime awareness programs for businessmen and neighborhoods.

“It went very well, so we’re probably going to put together another one,” Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley said last month.

The department has never before staged such a seminar, nor was Binkley aware of other police departments that have arranged one for their community leaders. The idea for the evening session arose in reaction to the mail-bomb killings of a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer in the South last winter, Binkley said.

As Smith, the only council member to attend, said: “We deal with people’s problems, and everyone doesn’t always agree with us.”

Still, the seminar was held at a politically sensitive time, when the police administration was engaged in a heated labor confrontation with the police union, and union-backed City Council candidates were beginning to take swipes at the police administration.

The timing raised the question of whether police management was trying to curry favor with community leaders, a contention that Binkley curtly dismisses.

“It just developed, why not?” Binkley said of the program, angrily suggesting that the police union was trying to make an issue out of the seminar.

Binkley said various public officials and business people were invited--about 40 individuals with whom the department has worked and “who’ve been supporters of police management.”

He estimated that about 15 people showed up, including the spouses of those invited.

Binkley said he did not know how the next group of invitees would be chosen, if another seminar is held. The program cost very little, Binkley said, because the SWAT team’s appearance was part of a regular exercise and most of the police officers at the program were at the staff level and thus not paid overtime.

The existence of a selective invitation list troubled some.

“It sounds very elitist,” said Larry Davis, a member of the Public Safety Advisory Commission, which advises the City Council on public safety issues.

“Let’s use folks to fight crime in Long Beach and put cops on the beat and stop doing all these little fancy things,” added Davis, who said he was not invited.

Councilman Warren Harwood, who says he has been threatened by a neighbor, could not recall whether he had been invited, but he did not attend.

“What does concern me a little bit is the fact that people in city government developed a special program for special people. It’s, you know, going to possibly subject us to legitimate criticism on the basis of who’s excluded.”

Gray said he saw nothing sinister about the seminar. “For a first go-round, I think it was very well done.”

Since attending the session, Talin said he has been more careful. “There are so many things to look for that I never took into consideration,” such as where he pulls up in a parking lot.

In addition to talking about security precautions, bombs, kidnapping situations and the like, police also allowed the executive students to fire weapons if they wanted to.

“The last time I fired a gun I was hunting,” Talin said. “It was 1954.”

He stepped onto the target range with a revolver, only to realize quickly that guns today are much more powerful and accurate than they used to be.

“Even a dummy like myself has an opportunity of being extremely accurate the first time,” said Talin, who twice hit the target in the heart.