Palisades Park Called Magnet for Crime : Homeless: Police chief says that enforcement of law banning sleeping in the park would curb the problems. But the city attorney refuses to prosecute the cases.

Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts has concluded that Palisades Park is a magnet for drug dealing and violent crime that could be curbed if the city ordinance prohibiting sleeping in public parks were enforced.

“This drug activity would appear to be encouraged by the use of parks as unsupervised shelters,” Butts wrote in an Oct. 25 report to the City Council. “The fact that our parks are consistently used at night in a campground type of arrangement has attracted street drug dealers who hawk crack cocaine. These people have been coming to the city in what appears to be increasing numbers.”

Butts, who has been police chief for less than two months, based his strongly worded assessment on a monthlong crackdown and study of crime in the parks that was requested by the City Council Sept. 10. The crackdown included enforcing the controversial ordinance that bans sleeping in the park from midnight to 5 a.m.

The chief’s views put him at odds with City Atty. Robert M. Myers, who has refused to prosecute anyone who violates the law against sleeping in the parks because of his view that homeless people have no alternative.

Myers wrote in an Oct. 10 memo to the City Council: “The city is subjecting the poor and the shelterless to the indignity of a criminal arrest solely because our society has failed in its commitment to provide affordable housing. I have been unable to identify any basis upon which the city’s action advances the cause of justice.”

On Tuesday night, the City Council voted unanimously to hold a closed personnel hearing at its next meeting to discuss the propriety of Myers’ memo, which many council members learned about from reporters and which City Manager John Jalili called unprofessional.

Though many council members have privately expressed to Myers dismay about his tactics, Councilman Herb Katz pressed for a more formal personnel hearing to underscore what he views as insubordination. “The city attorney’s job is to enforce the laws, not to make them,” Katz said. “Otherwise his opinions are personal and not ones that should be put upon us as a council.”

Myers eyes were downcast and his face flushed during the discussion, but he said nothing and would not comment after the meeting.

Katz also sought a reaffirmation of the council’s earlier direction to the police chief and city manager to enforce the existing laws as needed to protect public safety. The council sidestepped taking another vote on the matter, citing a request from the city’s homeless task force to refrain from changing policy until it delivered its report due Dec. 10. But Mayor Judy Abdo noted that no one on the council was seeking to change the directive. “I reaffirm what we did before,” Abdo said.

Councilman Kelly Olsen also gave Butts and Jalili a vote of confidence. “I’m perfectly satisfied with the city manager and police chief as far as (their) reading what the council direction was.”

No one mentioned Butts’ report, which was sought by City Council members as a follow-up to their request to step up enforcement of laws on the books, as resources allowed.

The law against sleeping in parks--and how vigorously it should be enforced, if at all--has become a central issue in Santa Monica’s continuing debate about how best to manage its large and unruly homeless population.

Last week, the city’s task force on the homeless attempted to find some middle ground on the issue, recommending that police be given latitude in enforcing the law. It recommends that police aggressively enforce laws to protect public health and safety, but also recognize the “civil rights and personal dignity” of all.

The task force, charged by the City Council with devising a comprehensive strategy for managing the community’s homeless population, is, however, planning to recommend a law against encampments in the park when it issues its report to the council in December.

Butts’ noted in his report that three murders and two attempted murders--all drug related--have occurred in or on the fringes of Palisades Park since the end of August. Of 120 drug-related arrests from mid-September to mid-October, 72, or 60%, were transients. Only 11 arrestees had Santa Monica addresses. The drug seized in all of the arrests was cocaine.

“The sampled violent crime data tends to suggest that what would on the surface appear to be humane and compassionate policy (allowing homeless people to sleep in the parks) in the long term might actually impinge upon the safety of the homeless and the citizens of Santa Monica alike,” Butts said.