L.A.’s Hiring Freeze Is Expanded to Police : Budget: Firefighter and sanitation jobs also are frozen for 7 months as the city’s financial crisis deepens.

As one of the bloodiest years in Los Angeles history draws to a close, Mayor Tom Bradley on Wednesday ordered an emergency, seven-month freeze on hiring police officers and other city personnel to cope with a deepening, recession-driven city financial crisis.

The order, which also encompasses fire and sanitation workers, follows a warning earlier this week from the city’s top budget watchdog that Los Angeles faces a $120-million budget deficit over the next 18 months if cost-cutting measures are not implemented.

Police officials coping with a homicide rate that has already topped 800 said cutbacks may mean that response times will again creep upward and that officers will have less time to patrol the streets.

“There is no doubt . . . the city needs more police officers,” Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said. “But all city departments, including the Police Department, are going to have to be more efficient. This is a moderate step that will prevent more drastic steps later.”

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, saying he was concerned by the mayor’s action, criticized the city’s budget planning. “This money crunch should have been anticipated,” he said.

But Gates said the Police Department will do its part to reduce costs “if the city indeed is building an indebtedness.”

Other police officials said the hiring freeze, which by next July will shrink the 8,400-officer force by 150 to 200 through attrition, could have serious long-term consequences.

“That will kill us. . . . We’re going to set a (homicide) record this year . . . the timing is terrible,” LAPD Assistant Police Chief Jesse Brewer said.

Brewer said the freeze likely will mean it could take police longer to respond to emergency calls. The department--with the addition of 1,500 officers over the last six years--had just recently reached its goal of responding to emergencies in an average of seven minutes. Brewer also said that as job vacancies mount, officers will have less time to patrol neighborhoods.

“We are just now getting the department to a level where we think we can provide some adequate level of protection,” Brewer said.

Some community leaders in crime-plagued sections of Los Angeles reacted with outrage at the prospect of fewer officers patrolling the streets. Others welcomed the prospect that controversial and costly programs, such as anti-gang sweeps, will be re-evaluated.

“It’s incomprehensible,” said Lou Negrete, a senior leader with the Eastside-based United Neighborhoods Organization. “Our community is already swamped by crime . . . gangs control the streets. If violence and crime continue to go up, we’ll never catch up.”

But Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said that the buildup of the department’s manpower has not curbed crime anyway. He said the budget squeeze offers a “very, very ripe” time for city officials “to look more creatively at how the limited resources . . . can be most effectively used.”

Bradley’s freeze on police hiring is another sign that the city is suffering from an economic downturn because of lower tax collections.

“It’s called a recession and it’s going on across the country,” said Keith Comrie, city administrative officer, who recommended the hiring freeze.

With the city’s major sources of revenue closely tied to real estate and business transactions, the economic slump has hit fast and hard, city analysts said. In the current fiscal year, taxes tied to business incomes will be off $7.3 million from what was projected, sales tax collections will be off $5.2 million and fees for new construction permits and real estate transfers will be down about $6 million.

All together, Comrie predicts a $20 million shortfall in city income in the current fiscal year and up to $100 million in 1991-92.

The budget problems were evident earlier this year when Bradley and the City Council imposed nearly $60 million in new taxes and placed a hiring freeze on most departments. Officials had hoped to spare police, fire and sanitation departments, but because they are so substantial, Bradley was forced to include them, Fabiani said.

Fabiani said that even with the loss of 200 officers over the next seven months, the police force will still be the largest ever in the department’s history.

But police officials note that the population of Los Angeles has grown rapidly in recent years and that gang shootings and other street violence have increased. Homicides in the city are running 17% ahead of last year and are approaching the all-time high of 1,028 in 1980.

Fabiani and Comrie said the depth and duration of the recession will determine how long the police hiring freeze will have to be maintained.

Bradley’s action did not come as a surprise to City Council members, who have been receiving gloomy financial forecasts for months.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi downplayed the significance of the mayor’s move.

“This is almost a ritual, as long as I can remember, whether it was Yorty or Bradley,” said Bernardi, a 29-year council veteran. “We don’t have a budget crunch, we have a priority crunch. . . . All these warnings, all these threats about the dire consequences we’re going to be faced with, that’s a lot of malarkey.”

However, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, repeated warnings he has issued over the last several months.

“The freeze is one of a series of steps necessary to get us through this fiscal year and preserve what limited options we have for next year,” he said.

Bradley and the council must now take additional steps, Yaroslavsky said, including a freeze on equipment purchases, cutbacks in departmental programs and deferral of capital improvements and other projects.

“The fundamental message is that the city must stop spending beyond its means in order to avoid massive tax and fee increases, and/or layoffs during the next 18 months,” he said.

Officials with the fire and sanitation departments said Wednesday that they had just begun assessing the effects of the hiring freeze.