Myers Gone, but Not the Homeless He Championed : Law: Joseph Lawrence has adhered to the policies of the city attorney he replaced, as council candidates take sides on safety issues.

The ghost of Robert Myers is hovering over the Santa Monica City Council election as candidates debate the city’s handling of public safety issues and the current council’s handling of Myers.

His earthly presence has been evident at City Hall, too.

Though Myers was fired as city attorney about six weeks ago, he continued to come to work for more than a month, Assistant City Manager Lynne Barrette confirmed last week. He was quietly advised 12 days ago by members of the City Council that it was time to vacate his office.

Myers’ continued presence gave at least symbolic credence to charges from some of the 18 candidates running for four City Council seats that nothing has changed since he was fired for thwarting the council’s efforts to implement portions of a comprehensive program for the homeless recommended last year by a citizen task force. Myers criticized some of the enforcement recommendations as “repressive” and said they would infringe on the rights of the homeless.

At candidate forums and in interviews, many of the candidates have attacked the firing of Myers in September as a political act aimed at saving the careers of the two incumbents on the ballot, Ken Genser and Judy Abdo.

Suspicions have even been raised that if the Santa Monicans for Renters Rights coalition (SMRR), to which Genser and Abdo belong, maintains control of the council, Myers could be rehired.

Genser and Abdo have denied they have any such plans. “I certainly would not have gone through the pain and agony of firing him to hire him back,” Abdo said. “There were very good reasons for why he needed to leave the city.”

Acting City Atty. Joseph Lawrence said he asked Myers to assist in the transition, and was pleased that Myers agreed.

“Only in Santa Monica would someone’s willingness to work without pay to provide me with information on projects only he knows about be an issue,” Lawrence said. “To Bob’s credit, he was willing to assist me. Santa Monica could not afford for Bob to be declared brain-dead during this period.”

Though Myers’ exit is billed by the council majority as major movement, the road map for enforcement and prosecution of some homeless-related crimes remains drawn but untraveled--and the City Council candidates are as divided as the rest of the populace.

Police Chief James T. Butts says he needs to have violators of laws, such as those against living in the parks, vigorously prosecuted. But there is still a chasm between the police and the city attorney’s office on these matters.

Lawrence has been on the job since the night Myers was fired, but Butts said this week he has been unable to discuss the issues with the lead prosecutor. “He has had solid scheduling conflicts,” Butts said.

Butts said a meeting is set for later this month.

That means Myers’ policies are intact in the interim--and Lawrence has said that will continue as long as he is in charge.

“It’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” said community activist Jean Sedillos, comparing Lawrence to his former boss. Sedillos heads the group Save Our City, which was formed to address public safety issues.

Meanwhile, candidates talking to voters say public safety is very much on their minds.

“I sense it’s the No. 1 issue,” said Asha Greenberg, a Los Angeles prosecutor who made her debut on the local political scene about 1 a.m. when she came to a council hearing some months ago to complain about Myers. “The present City Council is not responsive to residents, especially when it comes to public safety.”

Roughly half of the candidates, including Greenberg, are making public safety a central campaign theme. Others include a three-member slate backed by the Citizens’ Protection Alliance: A. Marco Turk, John Baron and Edith Shane.

Independents Tom Pyne, Anthony Blain, Patrick Regan and Joel Pierce are also pushing the public safety agenda hard.

And nearly all the others also acknowledge that it is a prominent issue.

Chief Butts insists that a large criminal element exists within the homeless population. When these offenders take up residence in the parks, “they are free and around to commit crimes when the opportunity arises,” he said.

Butts said that one-third of all calls for police service involve transient-related matters. For paramedic calls, the percentage is 50%, city records show.

Statistics compiled by police show that transients were booked for half of the 26 rapes committed in Santa Monica in 1991. They also accounted for half the arrests for drug-related charges and 71% of the arrests for being drunk in public in 1991. Last year, more than 1,000 homeless people were arrested for public drunkenness.

This year so far, it’s more of the same. Through August, police found that 40% of those arrested for robbery, 36% for burglary and 31% for aggravated assaults were transients.

Butts said many of those he arrested in what he hoped would be test cases for the city’s new law against camping in public places were career criminals with records of assaults, robberies and rapes.

In response to a Times questionnaire, eight of the City Council candidates said they favored prosecution under the city’s untested encampment law. They are: Turk, Baron, Shane, Greenberg, Pyne, Regan, Pierce and Planning Commissioner Paul Rosenstein.

Eight others said they were against prosecution until adequate shelters for the homeless were made available. They are: Blain, Merritt Coleman, Ellen Goldin, George Hickey, Dorothy Ehrhart-Morrison, Beloved Quail, J.P. Sole and Alan Weston.

Slow-growth activist Hickey said the current encampment law “is a cruel hoax on the people of Santa Monica, written in response to public emotional pressure.”

Not squarely on either list are incumbents Genser and Abdo. Both say they had an active role in developing the homeless task force’s “tough love” recommendations for managing the homeless population.

In Genser’s view, criminal charges for living in parks are unwarranted “in most instances. . . . It would be extremely costly and a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

Abdo, who voted for some drafts of the law but not the one that finally passed, did not directly answer the Times question on prosecuting violators of the encampment law. Instead, she reiterated her view that the city should have “zero tolerance for crime.”

A look at the two lists illustrates how complicated it is this year to pigeonhole candidates. Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, for example, has given its much-coveted endorsements to Rosenstein and Goldin (as well as the two incumbents). Rosenstein favors prosecution under the encampment law and the firing of Myers. Goldin opposes prosecution without adequate shelters and said she would not have voted to fire the city attorney.

Pyne and Weston, both with ties to the business and homeowner communities, are similarly split on the issue. Pyne, who will be the next president of the Chamber of Commerce, says prosecution is essential.

Weston, a financial analyst whose views on budget and fiscal matters are similar to Pyne’s, disagrees. “I do not think the ordinance should be enforced until some alternative place to sleep is created,” he said.

Despite his views on encampment prosecutions, Weston won an important endorsement of the city’s police and firefighters’ associations, who put out their own slate cards. The three others backed by the rank-and-file officers of the city are Blain, Genser and Greenberg.

Save Our City has not agreed on whom to endorse, but Sedillos said early in the race that her group liked Greenberg, Pyne, Weston and, possibly, Blain.

How voter sentiment on the public safety issue will play out is difficult to determine, especially since the matter is sure to be muddied by campaign mail in which nearly all the candidates portray themselves as tough on crime.

But with votes spread among so many candidates, a solid block of “public safety” votes, if indeed they exist, could give at least one candidate the edge he or she needs to sneak past the powerful SMRR machine. And it is just as conceivable that voters for whom the issue is paramount will scatter their votes, electing no one.