Mayor Calls for Audit of Police Dept. Operations : Administration: He wants to determine if 1,500 new officers and a $100-million budget increase have improved service. An LAPD spokesman says the request is ‘not alarming.’

Mayor Tom Bradley is seeking a sweeping management audit of the Los Angeles Police Department to determine whether the hiring of 1,500 new officers and a yearly budget increase of $100 million have improved police service, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Thursday.

“The public deserves to know if its money is being spent as effectively as possible,” said Fabiani. “It would be an audit from top to bottom to see how the department is deploying its 1,500 new officers and what the taxpayer is receiving for its outlay.”

The call for an audit of police operations came just two days after the City Council made the rare move of calling the entire Police Commission to appear at a public hearing next month to discuss whether it is exerting its proper “authority and role” in dealing with a wide range of problems that have beset the Police Department in recent weeks.

Fabiani said the mayor has been considering the audit for six months--long before Bradley and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates began a public war of words over alleged police misconduct stemming from a drug raid at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue.

Gates could not be reached for comment Thursday, but his chief spokesman, Cmdr. William Booth, noted that the department worked closely with independent auditors who reviewed police operations 10 years ago, not long after Gates became chief.

“The thought of an audit is not alarming,” Booth said. “We do internal audits ourselves all the time.”

Fabiani said the mayor will either order Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie to conduct the audit or have the Police Commission request the study. Both Fabiani and Comrie said it is likely that an independent consulting or research firm would be brought in to conduct the evaluation.

The mayor’s call for an accounting comes as the City Council has raised similar questions about the department’s effectiveness.

Two months ago, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky asked Comrie to determine where new officers are being deployed. He said the boost in manpower does not appear to be having an effect on reducing crime. Comrie said his office is still waiting for a response from the Police Department.

Yaroslavsky said he questions whether the city is getting its money’s worth out of the $100-million increase in the police budget.

“Gates and the department have not been pressed to answer tough questions,” Yaroslavsky said. “There has been no critical analysis of the department.”

As for the delay in obtaining the information he sought, Yaroslavsky said Thursday, “I’m troubled by that. We should have had some answers by now.”

Comrie said that many council members have said they want a full management audit conducted, and not just a simple listing of where officers have been assigned. “There is a consensus building on the council for a full audit” that would measure the effectiveness of the department’s decisions, said Comrie.

But Comrie said he has advised council members to wait until all of the recently approved officers have been deployed in the field before launching a major study.

Fabiani said “the mayor believes that an audit would be most timely after Jan. 1, when (the department) will be near its full, authorized strength.”

Robert Talcott, president of the five-member Police Commission, said he would “have no opposition” to a full, independent review of police operations.

“I don’t see any downside at all to having an audit,” he said. “The department is open and I would have no opposition to that.”

He said the civilian members on the Police Commission are just as concerned as elected officials at City Hall that the Police Department is run properly and efficiently. “We’re there for the same purposes as the City Council, which is to ensure we have the most efficient and best Police Department we can have. We’re interested in dealing with all of the problems.”

George Aliano, president of the Police Protective League, said the rank-and-file officers support a thorough review of the LAPD. “The department should have nothing to hide,” he said.

He said the reviewers should study deployment, response times, overtime pay and whether more positions can be filled by civilians to free officers to work street patrols.

“They need to find out if there are enough officers to do the job,” he said. “Are there enough detectives to do the follow-up investigations that crimes require, rather than handling things by phone? Detectives do too much paper shuffling and don’t get to maintain contacts with victims and witnesses. People aren’t getting that kind of personal attention.”

He noted that some narcotics detectives work so much overtime that they sometimes take as much as half of each month off the job in compensatory time.