Hiring Freeze in Police, Fire Depts. Urged to Cut Debt : Budget: The actions are called necessary to head off escalating problems that could put the city $180 million in the red.

Drastic measures, including a freeze on Police and Fire Department hiring, will be necessary to head off escalating financial woes that could put Los Angeles as much as $180 million in debt, officials said Tuesday.

The situation is so serious that the hiring freeze--already in effect for most city departments except police, fire and sanitation--should begin in January, according to budget-slashing recommendations by Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie.

The most controversial of Comrie’s recommendations is expected to be the police freeze, which would reduce the size of the force at a time when the public is increasingly concerned about crime. The plan would cut 165 officers in the first half of 1991.

“We recommended today that we can only seriously consider a freeze right now until June 30,” Comrie said Tuesday. “If we don’t do something now, we may have deeper problems by the time we get to July.”

Comrie said he only recommended a six-month freeze “until we get the new budget in May and know what all the problems are.”

One of the options Comrie presented to the Council’s Budget and Finance Committee included continuing the police freeze over the next 18 months, meaning the loss of another 330 by the middle of 1992.

Extending the freeze to police and fire personnel will not immediately reduce the number of patrol officers and firefighters, Comrie said. “Some of the cuts initially will be taken out of management and supervision as that attrition takes place,” he said. “You can spread that out and it won’t be noticeable to the public. But as the rest of attrition takes place on the front line, the public is going to be impacted.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Budget and Finance Committee chairman, said the council is going “to have to take some drastic actions. This city is in very serious financial trouble.”

The police freeze, Yaroslavsky said, would be “an about-face” from earlier plans he pushed to increase police protection.

Overall, he said the city’s 37,000-member labor force must be cut by 2,000.

“If we could avoid touching the Police Department, that would be the preferable course, but I’m not sure we can take it,” he said.

“It’s a drastic action. It’s going to be hard for the public to swallow. The odds are all or most of these recommendations will have to happen.”