Officials Who Favored Deputies Now Back Plans to Add Officers : Law enforcement: The call for a new tax comes after the City Council voted 5-4 to end the contract with the Sheriff’s Department. A bond measure is also proposed.

City councilmen who failed to pull together enough votes to replace the city’s police officers with sheriff’s deputies pledged to find new ways to bolster what they call an underfunded and understaffed Police Department.

Frustrated that they could not persuade a majority of the council Tuesday to abandon local control for a less expensive contract with the Sheriff’s Department, Councilmen Douglas Drummond and Les Robbins said they will support taxing city residents to pay for an additional 100 police officers.

Drummond also suggested floating a 20-year bond to build three police substations and a police and fire communications center.

On a 5-4 vote Tuesday, the City Council decided to eliminate the final year of the contract with the Sheriff’s Department and ask that the deputies pull out of the city in July, 1993.

“We have missed an opportunity to provide 25% more officers at the street level for a lesser price,” Drummond said. “But now I’m going to work very hard to finance the Long Beach Police Department. This is the greatest time to borrow money,” because interest rates are low, he said.

Robbins, one of the strongest supporters of the Sheriff’s Department, agreed that he would lobby his district for more funding. But he said he thought it unlikely that residents would vote in favor of a new tax during a recession.

“I wouldn’t bet one thin penny that people will be pro-tax,” said Robbins, a sheriff’s sergeant in East Los Angeles.

Others questioned whether a year would be enough time to prepare even the 49 officers the city has promised to put on the street when the sheriff’s contract ends July 1.

“I don’t think the police officers can train 49 officers and put them in the field in time to meet their next deadline,” said North Long Beach resident Jim Lemieux. “I could care less about the public image of having commissions and ‘local control.’ Low crime stats and good response to emergency situations by the patrolling agency, whoever it is, that’s what presents a good image to me.”

Martha “Mike” Croft, a 40-year resident of North Long Beach, said she and her neighbors had come to rely on the deputies’ black-and-white patrol cars cruising through their neighborhoods. When the Police Department patrolled the city, officers sometimes took days to respond to an emergency call, she said.

“I’m sick, let’s face it,” she said. “I think we’ll be back to status quo. And I know who will be on the short end of the stick: North Long Beach. The gangs and the dope dealers will be coming back.”

But those who backed the local police were thrilled with the decision. Immediately after the vote Tuesday, about 20 residents in the audience jumped to their feet, cheering and hugging one another.

Paul A. Chastain, the Police Officers Assn. president who many credited with uniting the department and area residents on the issue, came to the podium to thank the council.

“Two years is a long time to be an integral part of a yo-yo,” Chastain said, noting that several members of the force had postponed buying houses or moving to the city permanently while they waited almost two years for a council decision.

The Sheriff’s Department was asked to begin patrolling the north and northeast parts of town in 1990 to boost the understaffed Police Department. The action, first suggested by City Manager James C. Hankla, was endorsed by the council as a temporary measure. But in the past year, Councilmen Robbins, Drummond and Warren Harwood pushed to abolish the local force and replace it with deputies.

Pro-police residents said they also hope the vote will renew the council’s commitment to bolstering the local force.

“In light of the Rodney King situation, civil unrest and a move nationwide toward more citizen participation, could Long Beach afford to relinquish control to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department?” said Rod V. Givens, a member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

After the decision was made, many on the council and in the community called for unity to heal a city divided by a rancorous two-year debate.

“I don’t think competition (between police agencies) is what we need,” Councilman Ray Grabinski said. “Competition is not what makes things work. I think it’s support.”