Sensitivity, Public Safety Focus of Vote on Deputies : Law enforcement: The issue is whether to end a contract with the Sheriff’s Department. Some gays say that, despite progress toward community-based policing, bias persists.

Thomas Crail still seethes when he recalls the way a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy called him “fag” after a run-in in West Hollywood four years ago.

That memory is clouding his decision over how to vote on a proposal to replace the deputies with a city police force. As executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, which voted to oppose the switch, Crail knows the cautious reasoning against such a sudden move. But his anger remains.

“I’m still unhappy with that experience,” Crail said. “I won’t make up my mind how I’m going to vote until I punch the little holes.”

His situation reflects the city’s mixed feelings toward the Sheriff’s Department as voters consider a ballot measure to end West Hollywood’s $8.4-million law enforcement contract. Though the department is widely praised as an effective and increasingly community-oriented crime fighter, many in the city’s large gay community remain hostile toward an agency they have long seen as a hopelessly insensitive outsider.

After cost considerations, the fate of the Nov. 3 initiative will probably hinge on perceptions of how the Sheriff’s Department fights crime and gets along with the community.

The department isn’t likely to lose many votes on the first count. Crime in urban West Hollywood is cited by residents and politicians as the city’s worst problem, particularly on the prostitution-plagued East End, and many people are skittish about giving up on a department they know.

“I am not particularly interested in the money aspects of the current campaign,” said Tad Bright, an East End activist who opposes creating a city police department. “The paramount issue is public safety.”

The Sheriff’s Department, which has a station in West Hollywood, impressed many residents during the spring’s civil unrest with its ability to seal the borders of the two-square-mile city. Though looting and fires licked at its edges, the city escaped damage.

“We were cordoned off as securely as Beverly Hills,” said John Altschul, a member of the city’s Public Safety Commission who opposes the ballot measure. “There was no damage in West Hollywood. The riots did not happen in West Hollywood.”

Proponents of the measure are steering away from crime issues in favor of arguing for local control. “Our campaign isn’t anti-sheriff as much as it is pro-city,” said Paul Amirault, a leader of West Hollywood Citizens for Better Police Protection, the group behind the initiative.

State crime statistics show that although West Hollywood’s crime rate is lower than that of nearby sections of Los Angeles, it surpasses neighboring Beverly Hills and Culver City.

Initiative backers note that according to the Kolts report on Sheriff’s Department operations, the city had the highest per-capita crime index of all 19 sheriff’s stations. West Hollywood and the small unincorporated area patrolled from the West Hollywood station had 1,337 major crimes per 10,000 residents last year, compared with 839 for Marina del Rey, 598 for East Los Angeles and 409 for the Malibu region, according to the report.

Those per-capita numbers are misleading, however. Officials said that the above-average crime rate reflects the unique role of the city as a weekend mecca for club-goers, celebrity diners and gawkers from other areas. Because the population regularly swells to three and four times its normal size of 36,000, calculating total crime against the number of actual residents probably tilts the scales against West Hollywood.

But serious crime in West Hollywood went up 16% last year. The city experienced 4,738 cases of the eight most serious crimes, including 1,790 thefts, 994 burglaries and 951 vehicle thefts. The Sheriff’s Department also reported four homicides, 17 rapes, 468 aggravated assaults, 480 robberies and 34 cases of arson in 1991. The sharpest rise was in the number of assaults.

The number of rapes and burglaries dropped, though, and several other offenses posted declines through the first half of 1992. Bright, who heads East End Community Action, credited targeted efforts, such as an anti-prostitution campaign, that grew out of hours of meetings with residents, local department commanders and local officials.

Sheriff’s Department supporters cite such efforts and a greater emphasis on foot and bicycle patrols as signs of a good-neighbor policy toward the people it is hired to protect. Officials say that community-based policing may be more likely to succeed in a compact place such as West Hollywood, where residents tend to be well organized and outspoken about what they want.

“It’s easier to do community-based policing with people who already know what they want for services,” said Capt. Clarence Chapman, the West Hollywood station commander, who has won high marks among various community groups for advancing reforms begun by his popular predecessor, Capt. Rachel Burgess.

Residents also cite a cleanup of Plummer Park, which was considered too dangerous to visit at night only a few years ago. The park remains a hangout for the homeless, but it is also a favorite gathering spot for many of the approximately 4,000 Soviet emigres who live on the East End. Even late on a recent warm evening it was alive with visitors: old men hunched over chess boards, teen-agers on bicycles, women tending children.

Neighborhood watch activists also praise the West Hollywood operation for quick responses to specific crises, such as 19 burglaries last year that alarmed residents on the west end of the city. Using information from the sheriff’s station to establish a pattern, residents helped authorities make an arrest.

The largely critical Kolts report reserved praise for the department’s “partnership” with West Hollywood residents and city officials, taking special note of a special conference committee that joins deputies with gay representatives to acquaint sheriff personnel with an unfamiliar culture and improve relations.

The committee took the lead in getting Sheriff Sherman Block to issue a policy recently banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The committee has also persuaded the department to drop questions about sexual orientation from its psychological tests. It conducts sensitivity training for recruits countywide.

“As they find out that everybody isn’t a ‘flaming faggot’ with sequins and five-inch heels coming into town on a Friday night, their attitudes change,” said Bronwen McGarva, a lesbian who chairs the Public Safety Commission.

Despite improvements, the department remains in many people’s minds--through experience and gossip--a homophobic outside force that leaves gays vulnerable to growing attacks on streets they consider their own. That picture was strengthened when the Kolts report found widespread anti-gay bias among deputies at the department level.

Critics acknowledge that commanders have moved to make deputies more sensitive, but they maintain that sheriff’s personnel are too often indifferent to reports of gay-bashing. There were 23 reported cases of gay-bashing in West Hollywood last year, but experts say many cases go unreported.

A 34-year-old resident who reported that two men had called him “faggot” and chased him with chains two months ago said a desk officer told him to catch his breath and call back. The man, who declined to be identified, said that when he called back minutes later, “their attitude was, ‘What do you want us to do about it?’ ”

“They’re just not sensitive at all to this stuff,” said Gregory Gilbert, 27. He said a deputy did little to help after Gilbert’s face was bloodied by an attacker in Rage, a popular gay bar. “The first word out of the sheriff’s mouth was, ‘Stay away from me. I don’t want to get your blood on me,’ ” Gilbert said.

“It’s almost gotten to the point of gay myth that you’ve either had a bad experience with the Sheriff’s Department or know someone who has,” said Karl Hamner, a UCLA graduate student who is compiling 1,000 surveys for a doctoral thesis on gay-bashing.

Chapman has ordered deputies to take all reports of alleged gay-bashing, no matter how skimpy the evidence. The station has begun logging such complaints with the hope that even a little information may help later, he said.

Chapman has put out the word that anti-gay behavior will result in disciplinary action. He conceded that a desk officer “could have” brushed aside a report of alleged gay-bashing but should not have.

“You’re not going to get a perfect situation 100% of the time,” he said. Chapman added that the highly charged campaign over the police measure is making it more difficult to determine how many such accounts are true.