Long Beach Study Questions Savings From Using Deputies : Police: Auditor says contract with Sheriff’s Department would save $14.5 million, in contrast to $29-million estimate. But critics challenge report.

The endangered Long Beach Police Department appeared to receive a boost Tuesday when local officials predicted that savings from abolishing the force--and replacing it with sheriff’s patrols--would be dramatically less than originally projected.

Long Beach would save $11.4 million to $14.5 million annually if it abolished its Police Department and hired the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement, according to a city auditor’s report.

The Sheriff’s Department had estimated it could patrol Long Beach for about $29 million less annually than the local Police Department. To city officials facing a potential $10-million budget shortfall, that figure was appealing. Now, supporters of the Police Department are hopeful the City Council will back away from the sheriff’s proposal, which will soon be taken up in public hearings.

“There have been several members of the council who have said this is a money issue. (So) if there is little money savings, I’m confident we’ll retain our Police Department,” said Paul Chastain, president of the Police Officers Assn.

But proponents of the plan that would make Long Beach the largest city in the state without its own police force appeared skeptical of the city auditor’s report.

“I have some concerns about some of his numbers,” said Councilman Les Robbins, a sheriff’s deputy. “I don’t think anything is dead in the water yet.”

In a report to the City Council on Tuesday, City Auditor Robert E. Fronke said the sheriff’s figures did not take into account a number of factors, such as costs the city would have to pay even if the Sheriff’s Department took over. They include on-going expenses, such as pensions, workers’ compensation and accrued sick leave.

Fronke also said the Sheriff’s Department may have underestimated what it would take to police Long Beach. “The sheriff’s proposal was based primarily on a review of three different weeks of policing activities as reflected in the daily logs,” Fronke wrote in his report.

Sheriff’s Capt. Dennis Gillard, who heads the bureau that coordinates contracts with localities for the use of sheriff’s personnel, said his department did not underestimate Long Beach’s needs. The department made that mistake once before--when deputies began patrolling parts of the city in November, 1990, Gillard said.

“We certainly underestimated when we first went in there because we were given incomplete statistics by the Long Beach Police Department. We learned our lesson. We didn’t underestimate this time,” Gillard said.

As for the difference in operating costs projected by the Sheriff’s Department and the city, Gillard noted that the Sheriff’s Department did not analyze a number of city-related costs.

“It was not our job to analyze the city’s costs,” Gillard said. “We never said we would save the city money. We never even used the word savings . We said, ‘This is what it’s going to cost.’ ”

Nonetheless, supporters of the 84-year-old Police Department greeted the auditor’s report with relief and renewed optimism.

“Local control has to be worth more than $11 million,” said Chastain, whose union kicked off a public relations campaign late last year to elicit support for the Police Department.

Councilman Ray Grabinski, one of the council’s staunchest Long Beach police supporters, noted that some proponents of the sheriff’s plan had once estimated it would save the city as much as $50 million a year. “It’s gone from $40 million to $50 million down to $10 (million) and sliding quickly,” Grabinski said.

But supporters of the sheriff’s plan said they would like to see more information, including how the Long Beach Police Department plans to deploy its officers.

“I think it left a lot of unanswered questions,” said Councilman Doug Drummond, a retired 29-year veteran of the Long Beach Police Department who would rather have sheriff’s deputies patrolling the city.

The Sheriff’s Department, which would use about the same number of sworn personnel, said it could place 79 more officers on the streets by deploying more one-officer cars. The sheriff’s proposal also calls for replacing the department’s headquarters with three substations.

At Drummond’s request, the council agreed Tuesday to consider establishing four police substations. The council also plans to consider asking the county to create a regional criminal justice center in Long Beach, which would include a new jail.