State Money Sought to Keep L.A. Police Foot Patrols

With a popular Los Angeles police foot patrol program in peril due to unwillingness by police and elected city officials to pick up its $3-million price tag for another year, a legislator announced Thursday that he will attempt to raise the money in Sacramento.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) said at a City Hall news conference that he feels “encouraged” that his $8-million foot beat bill will win state approval. The legislation, which would also provide $2.5 million for foot patrols in crime-ridden areas of San Diego and San Jose, won support in the Assembly Committee on Public Safety this week, but has not yet picked up a sponsor in the state Senate.

The city’s foot patrol program has been hailed by police officials as having reduced violent crime in many of 13 “hot spots” from South-Central Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley, where officers have been deployed since the program began last September.

“It has has had a tremendous effect on homicides, which is the ultimate crime as far as we’re concerned,” said Deputy Police Chief Jesse Brewer, who joined Friedman at the event.

Brewer distributed charts Thursday showing that during the program’s first three months, only three of 17 homicides in the targeted neighborhoods occurred while foot patrol officers were present.

Despite the program’s success, Los Angeles police officials have said that proposed city budget cuts for police overtime would make it impossible to fund the patrols for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.

The program is already out of money for this year, and the City Council today is expected to debate whether to appropriate $500,000 to keep the patrols going through the end of June.

At the news conference, City Council members Zev Yaroslavsky and Richard Alatorre praised the patrols, the police and Friedman. They also indicated that the program is apparently dead if help does not arrive from Sacramento.

“In order to continue the foot beat program in any meaningful way, it’s going to take some assistance from outside the normal city budgetary process,” Yaroslavsky said. “Everyone here knows that this city is facing a major financial crisis.”

“It seems to me it’s worthwhile to continue it,” added Alatorre. “It’s unfortunate that it had to be cut out, but when you look at the fiscal picture for the city of Los Angeles, certainly other problems that the Police Department identified took a greater priority. There is nothing that is a greater priority than to cut down on the response time to crimes of violence and the like.”