Police Measure May Make Ballot Despite Flaws : Law enforcement: City attorney says the initiative would not stand up in court. But it appears headed for a Nov. 3 vote.

A proposed ballot initiative calling for the creation of a West Hollywood police department appears headed for a Nov. 3 vote, despite City Atty. Michael Jenkins’ opinion that the measure is legally flawed and would not stand up to a court challenge.

The City Council is expected Monday to put the measure on the ballot even though all five members have expressed resistance or outright opposition to the initiative, which was proposed by a residents group that gathered more than 4,500 signatures to put it to a vote.

“People have gone out and tried to use the democratic process,” said Councilwoman Abbe Land, who like other council members worries that setting up a police department would be too expensive. “It’s my responsibility to put that on the ballot and let people make a decision.”

The city is currently patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department at a cost this year of about $8.4 million. The initiative calls for the city to break off that contract and set up an independent police force in one year.

Jenkins said the measure is “clearly invalid” because as it is written, it would not enact a law--a key legal test for ballot initiatives--but simply direct the council to create a police department. In the July 23 opinion, Jenkins cited recent California court cases invalidating ballot measures that directed policy changes without enacting laws. The attorney also said the measure might be improper because it interferes with city budget-making powers by ordering a police department without providing for the new costs.

The council could accept Jenkins’ reading and scrap the measure altogether, but council members said they were reluctant to do that after so many residents had signed petitions to force a vote.

“That would be a poor excuse for taking it off the ballot,” said Councilman Sal Guarriello, who also opposes switching to a police department.

So far, debate over a city police department has centered on the issues of resident control over law enforcement and the costs of such a switch. City Hall staffers will report that a police force would cost between $13.3 million and $14.7 million annually, more than half again the current law-enforcement budget. Initiative supporters have argued that the shift could save the city money and are preparing a detailed budget.

Meanwhile, both sides are finding a potent new weapon in the same place: the scathing evaluation of the Sheriff’s Department recently issued by retired Judge James G. Kolts.

Proponents of a West Hollywood police department say the report is the smoking gun that proves years of charges from the city’s large gay population that the department has a long-running anti-gay bias.

Members of the Kolts panel found that gay and lesbian deputies would not speak to them out of fear of retaliation and that deputies routinely referred to gays as “fags” and “dykes.” The report said the department was not trying hard enough to recruit homosexuals and showed little regard for cultural sensitivity training dealing with stereotypes of gay men.

“It’s going to help our campaign, I’m sure,” said John Underwood, a spokesman for the West Hollywood Citizens for Better Police Protection, the group pushing the initiative. “These aren’t just allegations by a few people. These are things that really happened.”

Supporters have argued that a police department would offer better local control and be more likely to draw recruits from the city who are sensitive to the groups living there, such as gays and lesbians as well as emigres from the former Soviet Union.

“It comes down to that old Americana self-determination. We should be able to have our own law enforcement,” said John J. Duran, a prominent gay rights lawyer who in June unsuccessfully sought a Democratic nomination for the state Assembly.

But opponents are getting their own mileage out of the report, highlighting instead little-noticed passages that singled out the department’s community policing efforts in West Hollywood--especially its cooperation with the gay and lesbian community--as a model for how it should be operating countywide.

The report noted that deputies joining the West Hollywood station go through community orientation by city public safety officials and that station commanders have made it clear they will suspend any deputy caught making anti-gay slurs.

Wuzzy Spaulding, co-chair of the city’s Gay and Lesbian Sheriff’s Conference Committee, said that by dropping the Sheriff’s Department, West Hollywood activists would be abandoning gains in the department’s treatment of homosexuals in recruitment and training of deputies and sensitivity to gay and lesbian concerns.

At the urging of the conference committee, for example, Sheriff Sherman Block agreed in May to issue a departmental policy explicitly barring discrimination toward gays. That statement, which has not yet been released, was drafted at the department’s West Hollywood station house.

“If we are to benefit our gay brothers and sisters in other parts of the county, we need to keep the L.A. Sheriff’s Department here in West Hollywood,” Spaulding said.

The gay activists who proposed the police initiative have carefully avoided portraying it as a gay issue, pitching instead the advantages for local control and potential cost savings. But observers on both sides say that the city’s gay voters, who tend to vote in low numbers compared to other cities, will play a decisive role in this issue.

Duran said that because of the measure’s natural appeal to gays, he was baffled that it is opposed by some of the city’s best-known gay political figures, such as Councilman John Heilman. Duran argued that reform efforts could be applied just as effectively from outside the Sheriff’s Department, through civil rights laws or pressure on the liberal three-member majority of the County Board of Supervisors.

Heilman, noting that widespread opposition to the initiative is emerging among business leaders, homeowners and neighborhood groups, countered: “I don’t think we should pull ourselves out of the chance for reform.”

Steve Martin, head of the gay Stonewall Democratic Club and a city rent commissioner who opposes the initiative, conceded that the Kolts report may galvanize support for the measure among gay and lesbian voters already angered over Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto last year of the landmark gay rights bill known as AB 101.

“There’s the distinct possibility that this initiative could be pulled off solely on the strength of the gay and lesbian vote,” Martin said. “This might be the issue that awakens the sleeping giant.”