Punish Rioters, Bush Tells L.A. : Crime: The President promises little specific financial aid but offers compassion for the victims of unrest. He denies that his position is divisive.

Touring Los Angeles on Friday on his second post-riot visit, President Bush delivered a tough message that “lawlessness . . . must be punished,” while denying that his focus on crime was a political ploy based on race.

“There is nothing racist, there is nothing divisive, about protecting decent people from crime,” he said in a midday speech to the Town Hall of California.

“Some say it’s playing politics. Well, they’re wrong,” Bush said. “Playgrounds overrun by gangs, senior citizens locked behind triple-bolted doors, or mothers shot through open kitchen windows--this isn’t the America we want.”

With the immediate tension of the post-riot days dissipated, Bush offered little in the way of promises or specific financial aid, but he did offer a note of compassion, saying, “for those left behind, the system itself is broken.”

The President’s visit took him first to a disaster assistance center in South-Central Los Angeles, then downtown for a speech to business and political leaders, and, in the afternoon, to a private meeting with former President Ronald Reagan in Century City.

Bush ended the day with a visit to a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Youth Athletic League gymnasium in Lynwood, and then a speech to an Asian/Pacific American heritage dinner.

Congress and the White House are wrestling over a federal aid package of between $600 million and $1.5 billion, largely for Los Angeles in the wake of the riots. And the Labor Department announced during Bush’s visit that it is awarding $12 million to California to help meet employment and training needs of workers dislocated by the upheaval.

Bush--whose campaign was hit last week with the news that he trailed far behind Texas billionaire Ross Perot in a Times poll of California voters--offered an upbeat message, as he did on his previous visit, and made no mention of the presidential race.

“Yes, Los Angeles will come back,” he said, adding: “I hope the media will tell this heartening story loud and clear and give it as much attention as the looters and rioters received just a few weeks ago.”

The visit contrasted with Bush’s hastily arranged tour a week after the riots, when his motorcade weaved through ravaged sections of South Los Angeles and the scars of the violence left him ashen-faced.

On Friday, the presidential motorcade passed only briefly through an area hit by the riots-- which took 56 lives and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage--and his focus was on signs of success over the past three weeks.

Instead of touring burned-out mini-malls, as he did three weeks ago, Bush’s first stop was at a disaster relief center at the Harvard Recreation Center at Denker Avenue and 62nd Street, a few blocks from the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues, a major flash point of the riots.

“I was really struck by the progress that’s already been made in bringing this great city back,” he said later. “And I was struck by the spirit of those individuals that were there (at the center), not as spear carriers from some TV shot, but were actually filling out the loans.”

Speaking at the Biltmore Hotel to a luncheon meeting of the Town Hall of California, a 55-year-old public issues forum, Bush said that while he saluted the accomplishments of the federal government in aiding the riot victims, “there should be no misunderstanding: Federal assistance offers no reward for rioting.”

“This help has been directed to the victims, not to the perpetrators of the violence,” Bush said. “To the criminals who subjected this city to three days of terror and hate, the message has got to be unequivocal: Lawlessness cannot be explained away. It will not be excused. And it must be punished.”

Bush denounced what he said were two “false” choices: That urban decay and hopelessness can be solved with jobs and government money, or that “the answer lies in tougher law enforcement.”

“Jobs can’t get created in a wake of a crime wave,” he said, listing this as the “first lesson of L.A.”--that “there can be no opportunity, no hope, in a community where decent citizens are held hostage to gangs of criminals.”

The second lesson, he said, is that the problems of the cities cannot be fixed “with a simple increase in federal funds.”

“You don’t pump more gas into a car that doesn’t run,” he said. “We need to overhaul the engine.”

Bush was interrupted briefly midway through his address by a man who later identified himself as LaSalle LaSalle, 33, of Inglewood. The man stood in the front of the audience, about 15 feet from Bush’s lectern, shouted “Mr. President! Mr. President!” several times, and waved an envelope in his left hand.

“This is for you,” he said to Bush, as a Secret Service agent took the envelope but made no effort to stop the interruption.

“An unusual way to deliver the mail, but I’ll be glad to receive it,” Bush said.

The contents of the letter were later disclosed by White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. He said it praised a speech Bush gave 11 years ago that La Salle credited with turning his life around.

Before Friday’s speech, Bush met briefly with Gov. Pete Wilson, Mayor Tom Bradley, Peter Ueberroth, director of Rebuild L.A., and Patricia Saiki, administrator of the Small Business Administration.

They joined him at the luncheon meeting, along with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, and former Govs. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and George Deukmejian.

The disaster relief center at which Bush spent 36 minutes is one of 11 set up in the city since the riots, according to the White House. It is situated in a gymnasium and houses representatives of the Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration, the American Red Cross and other assistance agencies.

The President shook hands with most of the 50 to 60 workers there, chatting with some, examining the forms and assistance applications that are made available to local residents, and watching as Sherrille Graham, a hair stylist at the Much More Bounce hair salon, filled out a form for rent assistance.

After Bush appeared to supervise the procedure and autographed her aid application, Graham walked away, smiling. “I got money. I got money,” she said.

Graham, who said she needed the help because “the people are not coming (to the beauty parlor) like they used to,” was one of the few potential clients of the center visiting to fill out forms or seek information during the President’s visit.

“We all know this is an election year, so he has reason for coming to California,” said Gilmore Raphael, a state disability insurance representative who was seated at one of several long folding tables.

“In the years preceding this, we hadn’t seen much of the economic relief the President is now for,” said Paul Warren, whose belongings were destroyed when the building housing his apartment and the travel agency he owned was burned down in the riots. He was wearing shiny new penny loafers purchased with Red Cross money.

But the visit was heartening, nonetheless, to some business people who have been desperate for help since the end of the riots.

“It’s encouraging to the community to see that the President does care,” said James Roland, the owner of a stereo speaker manufacturing business, Speakers Inc., on South Vermont Avenue, that burned down on the second day of the riots.

While Roland was filling out an application for a federal disaster loan, Bush stopped briefly to talk with him.

Roland described how his 16-year-old business burned down before his eyes. At one point, Roland began to cry and wiped his eyes.

He said he had no idea the President would be at the center Friday and was moved that Bush had stopped to listen to his story.