Hollywood Business Group Seeks More Police : Crime: More than 80 merchants gather in opposition to Chamber of Commerce plans for the area.

A grass-roots business group that formed to oppose some of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s plans for the area has issued its first set of demands, including establishment of a police substation, more foot patrols and mounted police to combat widespread crime, vandalism and graffiti.

More than 80 merchants gathered at the second meeting of the Hollywood Boulevard District Improvement Assn. last Thursday night at the Oasis Club and spent several hours debating how to secure more police presence in the area and other issues of concern. A resolution to demand the increased police presence was approved unanimously.

Members of the fledgling association said they were especially concerned about the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s effort to prod business owners along the boulevard into creating their own crime watch group and ultimately a business assessment district in which area businesses would pay for increased services, such as added police protection.

Association president Vladan Holec accused the chamber of using the organizing effort, funded through a $56,000 grant from the Community Redevelopment Agency, as a means to get merchants to pay for services that the city should be providing.

“We have a serious problem with the city,” Holec told the merchants. “Unless we make them open their ears, we certainly have to raise a hell of a lot of noise for them to hear us. Fifteen, 30 years it has been, and we still have the same problems. . . . I am not going to give any more money until you (the city) show me you’re doing your job.”

Doreet Hakman, proprietor of Snow White Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard, echoed other shop owners’ sentiments at the crowded meeting when she said: “We want a substation, and we need foot patrols. We deserve it. We should let them know we mean business.”

Hakman and several other participants in the new association are members of a citizens advisory panel that has long been at odds with the chamber, City Councilman Michael Woo’s office and the CRA for their handling of revitalization efforts in Hollywood.

But the sheer number of merchants at last Thursday night’s association meeting, compared with the handful that showed up at the second and most recent chamber-sponsored meeting, seemed to underscore the resentment and distrust many merchants have of the chamber and its plans for revitalizing Hollywood Boulevard.

As to the group’s demands, Capt. Rick Dinse, the newly appointed commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, said he plans to meet with association officials to discuss how to beef up enforcement in the area.

“I am very aware of their concerns and very sensitive to them,” said Dinse, who took command of the division less than two months ago.

Dinse said he supported the idea of having a police satellite office on Hollywood Boulevard and agreed more foot patrols and perhaps mounted police units are needed.

Two foot patrol teams already are assigned to the area and Dinse said he has begun sending additional officers when they are available.

But budget constraints are severely curtailing LAPD’s ability to maintain foot patrols citywide, Dinse said, and there are only 32 mounted police officers in the entire city, Dinse said. As for a substation, police usually rely on a donation of space from area merchants to house the officers, he said.

“We would like to be able to respond in the fashion they (the merchants) would like to see,” Dinse said, “but I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that.”

In the meantime, while police determine if they can beef up Hollywood Boulevard patrols, creating a business watch group such as the one proposed by the chamber is the best method of curtailing crime, Dinse said.

Chamber president Larry Kaplan said he too supports a stronger police presence in the area. “But given the financial situation of the city, that’s going to be tough to achieve.”

The chamber’s proposed Boulevard Area Business Crime Watch Group is necessary because it can not only cut down on crime, but also give the merchants a mechanism through which to lobby for more police protection and other improvements, Kaplan said.

Such a proposal has put the chamber at odds with many of the merchants on Hollywood Boulevard. The merchants say they resent not only the business watch idea, but the chamber’s hiring of a former aide to Woo to organize them, without first seeking their views or consideration of other candidates for the job.

The group that the chamber has been trying to organize has no meetings scheduled, in part because Nina Greenberg, Woo’s former aide, is on vacation. She will begin meeting with merchants “on a one-to-one basis in the beginning” when she returns next week, Kaplan said.

“That’s really how you do it and figure out what the constituents want,” Kaplan said. “The only (merchants) who show up at the big meetings already have an ax to grind.”