L. A. Seeks to Strengthen Trespassing Laws : Legislation: The city wants to make it easier for owners to keep loiterers, especially drug dealers, off private property.

In an effort to curtail drug dealing, city officials and police are drafting an ordinance that would bolster existing trespass laws and make it easier for landlords and merchants to run loiterers off private property.

The proposed measure, which supporters call a prime example of the value of community-based policing, may be introduced to the Los Angeles City Council as early as this month, Deputy City Atty. Asha Saund Greenberg said.

“You need a mechanism where an owner can say, ‘I don’t want this person on my property; he’s not here to transact legitimate business,’ ” Greenberg said.

There is no existing city ordinance against trespassing on private property, and state trespassing laws are filled with loopholes, Greenberg said.

For example, an officer cannot arrest a trespasser under state law unless he refuses to leave the premises, she said. That means that the trespasser might leave only to return a few hours, or even minutes, after the officer departs.

Under the proposed city ordinance, being written by Greenberg and another deputy city attorney with the cooperation of police and Councilwoman Joy Picus’ office, a refusal to leave would not be required for an arrest.

One possible provision would require convicted trespassers to later avoid the location of their original arrest. A return would constitute a parole violation and lead to more jail time, said Los Angeles Police Officer Stephanie Tisdale, part of the community-based policing project in the West Valley Division.

Community-based policing is a school of law enforcement that calls for the public and police to work together on solving crime and identifying root causes, instead of officers simply responding to radio calls. Pilot projects have begun throughout the San Fernando Valley and in five more patrol areas in the rest of the city in response to recommendations by the Christopher Commission, the independent panel that evaluated the Police Department after the Rodney G. King beating.

“What you’re seeing is increased cooperation between police, property owners and tenants through Apartment Watch and programs like that,” Greenberg said.

“You see them working together to get rid of undesirables in the neighborhood, and I believe that’s a tremendous step forward.”

Much of Tisdale’s patrol area includes low-income apartment buildings plagued by drug dealing, prostitution and loitering. Some of the suspected drug buyers and sellers may be tenants, but the majority are outsiders who gather in courtyards and hallways and frighten law-abiding residents, she said.

Tisdale said she believes that if the loiterers were forced off the property, problem tenants would be likely to follow because their source of drugs and money would be cut off.

In the past, Tisdale has provided property managers and tenants with city-issued “no trespassing” signs to post around their premises--only to be frustrated by the weakness of existing trespassing laws.

Though trespassing is a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, Greenberg and Tisdale said it can be an effective means of clearing apartment buildings and mini-malls of troublemakers without having to wait to catch them committing a crime.

The new measure, Tisdale said, would give officers “the opportunity to say, ‘You cannot be standing there, you don’t live here, this is private property.’

“That means we can cut off the octopus’s legs,” she added. “Word gets around the police are out, they’re arresting, you’re going to be taken off the street.”

Greenberg said other officers and property owners throughout the city have expressed the same frustrations as Tisdale over existing trespass laws--making her and her colleagues realize that a new ordinance was needed. She cited a mini-mall in Hollywood where drug dealers are known to gather and wait for their customers to drive through the parking lot, and another shopping center downtown where illegal green cards are sold in the parking lot.

In Canoga Park, drug dealers have moved from Lanark Park, a chronic gathering place, to the phone booth of a nearby gas station, where their loitering intimidates workers and customers, said Sandy Kievman, an aide to Picus.

Loitering has been a major source of complaints to Picus’ office and prompted the councilwoman to introduce a motion in August instructing the city attorney’s office to draft a trespass ordinance, Kievman said.

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union declined to comment on the proposed measure without seeing a copy and on whether it might violate any civil rights.