CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS 12TH DISTRICT : Candidates Battle to See Who Pulls Rank in the War on Crime : Korenstein: The challenger wants more police officers on the streets, but redevelopment officials say her plan to pay for them won’t work.

Like most politicians, Julie Korenstein is quick to call for the hiring of more police officers to help combat crime. But she also has an idea for how to pay for them: Tap the budget of the city redevelopment agency.

A spokesman for the Community Redevelopment Agency said, however, that its property-tax revenues cannot legally be used for such a purpose.

Korenstein, a Los Angeles school board member, said the city should siphon off some of CRA’s tax-increment funds to hire more police officers and firefighters. She said CRA generates $100 million to $150 million annually in tax increment money, which accrues as property values rise in a redevelopment district.

“The city has to prioritize how they are going to use that money. . . . That money could be used to beef up the Police Department,” she said. “Is redevelopment more important than crime and safety in Los Angeles?”

But CRA spokesman Marc Littman said his agency, which is chartered to revitalize rundown areas, is restricted under state law to spend tax-increment funds on capital projects, almost all of them in inner-city redevelopment districts.

Littman said other politicians have previously raised the idea of using CRA funds to hire more public-safety officers. He said the funds have been used to purchase a mobile booking van for the Los Angeles Police Department and to help pay for mounted police patrols downtown, but such expenditures did not cover police salaries and were made to benefit the central-business redevelopment district.

Korenstein said that besides hiring more police officers, the city must make them more visible on local streets. Increasing foot and car patrols, she said, would help cut down on residential burglaries, which she views as the top crime problem in the suburban 12th Council District.

Korenstein said Los Angeles, like other cities, should explore the idea of assigning police officers to individual neighborhoods for extended periods. Besides increasing their visibility, such a policy would reduce the likelihood of police brutality.

“When police officers have the opportunity to get to know the people they deal with, it changes their whole perspective. . . . People become real human beings,” she said.

Korenstein also said money should be spent on drug education and after-school programs designed for “keeping the kids off the street.” Many home break-ins, she said, are committed by young adults who are gang members or need money to support a drug habit.

Korenstein said more officers should be assigned to the Police Department’s Devonshire Division, which encompasses virtually all of the 12th District. But she conceded that she does not know how many officers work there now or what the optimum number would be.

Korenstein has sent out campaign brochures to voters touting her authorship of a policy “requiring mandatory expulsion for students who bring guns” into Los Angeles city schools.

In fact, the policy requires a mandatory recommendation for expulsion by a committee of school administrators.

But district records show that school board members, including Korenstein, have repeatedly voted to overturn such recommendations and transfer students from their campuses rather than expel them from the school system.

Between last August and this month, 90 students have been recommended for expulsion on grounds of gun possession or assault. But according to records, the school board has overturned 47 of those recommendations, transferring students to independent study programs or to special schools for troubled children run by Los Angeles County.

Korenstein herself urged that 21 expulsion recommendations be suspended and that the students be sent to alternative schools, records indicate. Under state rules, students who are expelled may apply for readmission after two semesters.

“The choice is letting them wander the streets and burglarize homes and shoot into campuses or get them into structured education programs away from campus,” she said.

However, board member Leticia Quezada, who represents East Los Angeles and voted for the mandatory expulsion policy, said “it sends a confusing message” for the school board to simply transfer some weapons-carrying students to other school programs.

“I’m trying to keep to the spirit of the motion, so I’m not voting for those exceptions,” she said, adding that suspending expulsions for some offending students “is more difficult to justify.”

Korenstein said she watched the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by police on a television news show and found it “very frightening, very saddening.”

Although she called on Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to resign shortly after the beating, Korenstein said in a more recent interview that Gates should stay, since he is apparently working to prevent such occurrences in the future.

She cited the chief’s assignment of more minority commanders to the Foothill Division, where the beating took place, and his recent memo urging officers to report to their superiors any use of excessive force they witness by fellow officers.

“If Daryl Gates can become a part . . . of thinking about major changes, which he appears to be attempting to do now . . . then let it be,” she said.

In a recent campaign mailer, Korenstein claimed that “since Hal Bernson’s election to the City Council, crime in the northwest Valley is way, way up--by over 73%!” The brochure cited Police Department statistics for “Part I” crimes, which include murder, rape, burglaries and thefts, in the Devonshire division.

But according to police figures provided to The Times, crime in Devonshire rose about 54% between 1979--the year Bernson was elected--and 1990.

Asked to explain the apparent discrepancy, Korenstein’s campaign manager, Parke Skelton, said he actually used crime statistics beginning in 1978 to determine the percentage. That method of calculation added nearly 1,100 crimes to the total, boosting the percentage, although Bernson was not in office in 1978.

Skelton defended his method as “a rational comparison.”

“In terms of political propaganda, it doesn’t matter if it’s 65% or 73%. It’s just a number. And the number says crime is going up, a lot,” he said.