Bid to Cut Officers’ Desk Jobs : LAPD: Woo says he will hold public hearings and ask the Police Commission for a plan to place civilians in posts not requiring sworn personnel.

Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo, chairman of the council’s Government Efficiency Committee, said Wednesday he intends to hold public hearings on why hundreds of able-bodied police officers are assigned to desk jobs instead of field work.

“With the crime wave that’s hit this city, we can’t afford to have experienced police officers running a sports league, selling trinkets, teaching Spanish or videotaping the chief’s news conferences,” said Woo in a prepared statement that cited examples of unusual police deployment reported in a Times article on Sunday.

The article reported that more than 400 of the city’s 8,200 police officers are assigned to jobs that city auditors and even some within the police force contend do not require police skills and powers.

“We’ve studied this problem enough,” Woo said. “It’s time to act.”

He said he will introduce a motion on Friday to direct the Police Commission to come up with a plan within 90 days to replace with civilians all sworn able-bodied officers who are doing jobs that do not require police powers or skills.

He said he intends to call Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and Police Commission President Stanley Sheinbaum to testify in hearings on the motion.

The Police Department’s chief spokesman, Cmdr. Robert Gil, said when told of Woo’s plan: “My first reaction is that we will cooperate with whatever the city fathers want to do. They direct the commission to do something. We’ll cooperate with the commission in whatever way we can.”

In addition, he noted, the department has in the past made unsuccessful budget requests to hire civilians to replace some officers assigned to the front desks at neighborhood stations and to hire civilians as detective aides.

“If they will now support some of those requests, I think we would be glad to civilianize many of the positions we have identified in the past,” Gil said.

Woo’s motion would also instruct the Police Commission to estimate the cost of replacing those officers with civilians and the cost of providing refresher training courses and field equipment for officers who would be reassigned to the field, sometimes after years behind desks.

The commission’s plan should include development of a “promotional track” for civilian employees within the department, Woo said. Police administrators told The Times that the lack of such a career track hampered recruitment of civilians.

The department employs 2,600 civilians, many of them secretaries and clerks, auto mechanics and jailers, custodians and criminalists. But it has historically resisted hiring more.

The draft of Woo’s motion said the commission’s goal should be to put 400 more sworn officers on the streets within 18 months of the council’s approval of necessary funds.

Meanwhile, a second councilman, Marvin Braude, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said his interest in using more civilians in the Police Department also was “stimulated” by The Times article.

He said he intends to ask City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie “to explore all possible civilianization of police officer positions where you don’t need a fully trained police officer to perform the work.”

“I’ll tell him I want the report relatively soon,” Braude said. “ ‘Tell me the five top areas that you think are open to civilianization.’ ”

At that point, Braude said, he probably would hold a public hearing to decide whether to make recommendations to the full council.

Braude said he does not envision holding public hearings on deployment in general nor on the 400 positions mentioned in The Times article.

“That would be a circus,” he said. “I don’t think that would be productive. That would be like taking on the department. . . . You do it a little bit at a time. You get 20 positions this year. You get five positions the next. You get 30 positions the next year.”

Comrie said he had not yet been contacted by Braude, but preparing such a report on jobs that could be handled by civilians would be “easy to do.”

“We’d start with your (The Times) material and the prior audit (a 1981 audit of the department by the CAO) and then take a look at any further areas that have come up,” Comrie said.

Sheinbaum of the Police Commission said he has no objection to the plan of either councilman and noted that the commission had already begun its own inquiry into deployment.

Commission Vice President Jesse Brewer, a former LAPD assistant chief, began asking questions of the department about deployment a few weeks ago.

Brewer said he wants the department to justify its use of sworn officers in desk jobs and other positions outside the field. “In other words, do we really need a sworn person or do we need that job being done at all?” he said.