Election Over, Sheriff Now Faces the Real Challenge : Scandals: Critics and supporters say that Block must restore confidence in the department. They also say his victory should not be viewed as a mandate.

Sheriff Sherman Block may have trounced his opponents in Tuesday’s election, but critics and supporters alike say he now faces what may be the biggest challenge of his career--restoring confidence in a department suffering under one of its worst years of scandal and controversy in decades.

The fact that Block won two-thirds of the votes cast, they suggest, should not be viewed as a mandate because his two opponents were poorly financed and hardly a match for an incumbent sheriff.

Block, who was endorsed by several local and state law enforcement agencies and officials, had 617,091 votes, or 67%. His chief challenger, Rolan Biscailuz, trailed with 144,230 votes, or 24%.

“He’s got to improve the public image of the department,” said Shaun Mathers, vice president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, which endorsed Block. “He’s got to demonstrate that the allegations are only a small portion of the public contact a department the size of ours has.

“Just because he won 67% of the vote the community will not be tolerant of a decaying law enforcement agency,” said Danny Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade, who contends that deputies have been too quick to use force in making arrests.

But Block, 65, says his landslide victory confirms that his administration enjoys the confidence of the communities it serves.

“I don’t believe that our image . . . is all that tarnished,” Block said in an interview. “Of course, we’d like to see a time when nobody had any complaints.”

During a victory party for 100 supporters, Block said the vote “reaffirms the tremendous level of confidence the people in the community have in the men and women who make up the department.”

Ten sheriff’s deputies have been indicted on allegations of skimming money seized in drug busts. In addition, the department has come under fire for its handling of the shooting of a member of the Nation of Islam in Athens in January, and several other fatal shootings in minority communities.

A recent Times story reported that excessive force lawsuits against the department have nearly doubled in recent years and have cost the county $8.5 million in settlements and jury awards over a three-year period that ended last September. Block responded by ordering a review of the department’s policies regarding use of force.

Despite such problems, Block and his political advisers said they were never worried about the sheriff’s chances for winning a third four-year term.

“I had a political consultant call me Tuesday morning who asked, ‘Are you guys worried about a runoff?’ ” said Clark Davis, a political consultant to the Block reelection campaign. “I laughed.”

Indeed, Block’s chief rival, Biscailuz, a 44-year-old detective in the department’s Lennox station, raised only $1,400. By comparison, Block raised $351,992 at a single gala fund-raiser last fall.

The Block campaign spent a mere $100,000 on eight billboards and recycled radio advertisements to push its man over the top.

“The radio commercial he presented was almost identical to the one he used four years ago except for one thing,” said Harry Waterstone, who handled media advertising for the campaign. “He changed the words ’30 years with the Sheriff’s Department’ to ’34 years.’ ”

“My campaign,” Block acknowledged, “is no campaign.”

In the next four years, Block said, the department intends to expand a number of programs already under way, which are designed to enhance “service-oriented policing” by his 7,400-member force. These programs include a drug education program in local schools and sensitivity training for deputies.

“I don’t think there is an issue that anyone can point to that I have not addressed and dealt with objectively,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change.”

Biscailuz said his goal in running for the $157,641-a-year post was to call attention to the internal problems of the department. “That was my basic mission,” he said.