O.C. Learns From L.A. Riot in Effort to Prevent Unrest : Planning: Government and business must act now to ease tensions leading to violent outbreaks, officials say.

With murderous fury, rioters swept through Los Angeles last spring, prompting city and police officials to grapple with a series of thorny economic, social and political conflicts that led to the unrest.

Now Orange County, relatively unscathed by the violence and destruction to the north, faces challenges of its own as it becomes a more densely populated and diverse suburban landscape, officials say.

Damage in Orange County during the Los Angeles riots was limited to sporadic lawlessness in a handful of North County cities.

Many local law enforcement officials downplay the likelihood of mass, violent outbreaks in Orange County anytime soon but add that Los Angeles’ nightmarish experience has taught them to be prepared with plans for rapid, inter-agency help, just in case.

Authorities, pointing to demographic parallels between Los Angeles and Orange counties, see the riots in April and May as a warning for residents here. Now, they say, is the time for Orange County to work to prevent such a disaster.

“We need to look to the future and see if there are ways we can affect it,” said Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

“We need to make changes now that can prevent that kind of event in our future,” he said.

This county is grappling with some of the same problems--albeit in lesser degree--that gave birth to mass fury in Los Angeles, demographers say.

Unemployment in Orange County is up from 4.9% to 6.5%, according to September figures, making it harder for newcomers and longtime residents to find work. Unemployment in Los Angeles County is 10.4%.

More people are squeezing into less space in Orange County. Since 1980, the population has jumped 25% to about 2.41 million people, according to 1990 U.S. Census figures. That explosion, fueled by Asian and Latino immigrants, creates the risk of alienation and isolation among those newcomers if traditional political institutions don’t respond to their needs, officials say.

“You can’t look at that data and say that (civil disturbance) can’t happen here,” Kennedy said.

The riots appear to have frightened many Orange County residents. About half of Orange County residents believe that the sort of violence that swept L.A. will likely happen here in the next few years, a Times Orange County Poll found.

Residents of the central areas of the county were slightly more concerned than those living in the north and south, according to the poll taken by demographer Mark Baldassare about two weeks after the riots subsided.

Some law enforcement officials in Orange County say the riots moved issues such as community relations and interagency cooperation to the forefront as ways to avoid troubles like those of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Orange County’s social climate as well as relationships between police departments and city governments are generally more hospitable than those in Los Angeles, say law enforcement officials and demographers.

“Orange County is fortunate we don’t have major problems here,” said associate professor of anthropology Leo Chavez at UC Irvine. “Los Angeles has a lot to teach us about multiculturalism, but Orange County can teach a lot too. Orange County is not Los Angeles.”

Hoping to formulate a plan to avert future problems, a group called Orange County Together formed as a response to the riots. Made up of about 50 business officials, academics, community members and local government officials, the group sounds out possible solutions to social problems facing the county.

The way to solve urban problems in the past has “been to dump money” in the cities, said H. Fred Mickelson, a member of the board of directors of the United Way and co-chair of the fledgling group. “But now we have to help out with training for jobs,” Mickelson said during a meeting last week in Anaheim.

“If you are not educated, if you do not have the skills, you are going to get frustrated,” Mickelson said.

On the group’s agenda: homelessness, joblessness and ethnic tension.

Local government in Orange County, representing different ethnic groups, “has to involve people in the governing process,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said. Members of the county’s large Latino and Asian communities should seek out government positions, and “we (in government) have to show that their thoughts and opinions count,” she said.

“We have the luxury now to start planning so there will never be an L.A. situation,” Wieder said.

Local police hope there will never be an “L.A. situation.” But if one should happen, they are ready, officials say.

Rioting “woke everyone up in the county regarding being prepared, and you can’t be too prepared,” Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters said.

The Webster Commission, the blue-ribbon panel that studied the Los Angeles police response to the riots, said the “swiftness and ferocity of these events stunned the entire city and its people.” The response from police and city officials, the report continued, “was marked by uncertainty, some confusion and an almost total lack of coordination.”

Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, whose comments mirrored those of other top local law enforcement officials, said: “Luckily in Orange County we saw the potential (for civil strife) coming” and law enforcement officials discussed it even before the riots.

Police chiefs and their departments held mutual aid training sessions and have maintained good communication between departments, Gates and other officials said.

Currently, a joint committee of police and fire chiefs is studying ways to provide police protection for firefighters sent to areas where they may be attacked while working, officials said.

Several Los Angeles firefighters and at least one Orange County firefighter were injured while trying to douse arson blazes during the riots.

One fire chief in Orange County, Westminster’s D’Wayne Scott, created a storm of controversy after declining the Los Angeles Fire Department’s request for help on the first night of the riots, saying he was concerned for the safety of his firefighters.

Westminster officials have placed Scott on administrative leave pending the outcome of an “ongoing performance evaluation.”

Although unsure what the joint police-fire department committee will ultimately recommend, Scott said last week: “I do think it’s a way to approach the problem. . . . I think the way the police chiefs and fire chiefs are doing it is the way to go.”

“You have to recognize there are a lot of people out there who will take advantage of situations,” said Scott, who suggests that firefighters should have police protection from their cities and should have continual protection by those officers en route to the fire.

Scott is still the subject of personnel commission hearings, which are expected to wrap up next month.

The question of a police officer’s use of force--which formed the basis for the state trial of four white LAPD officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney G. King--is still being debated in Orange County and nationwide, said Hugh Foster, director of the Golden West College Criminal Justice Training Center in Huntington Beach.

The debate over how much force an officer should use had been an issue long before the riots, Foster said, but following King’s beating, some county police chiefs and the Peace Officer Standard Training organization, which sets training standards statewide, began discussing expanding officer instruction in that area.

For some police departments, the riots helped focus attention on some important, but at times overlooked, day-to-day issues. In Anaheim and other county cities, the riots “raised concern about not losing touch with the community and community issues,” said Anaheim’s police chief, Joseph T. Molloy.

Cities like Santa Ana have created positions for officers or non-sworn personnel to work as a liaison between the department and communities to help both keep abreast of pressing issues.

Local police departments temper their optimistic outlook with a caution: there are still many unknowns surrounding any possible outbreak of violence in the county, and one of the most important is gangs.

Police do not think gang members would organize in the event of a major civil disturbance, but “I could see the possibility where . . . there is a spontaneous reaction and you have gangs taking advantage of the police inability to control the situation,” said Fullerton Police Chief Philip A. Goehring, echoing comments from other police chiefs.

Even as Los Angeles officials struggle to heal massive wounds from three lawless days last spring, “the challenge for us (in Orange County) is to keep interest alive” in how to improve things here, “without making people feel there is a sense of crisis” said Kennedy of the county human relations commission.

“I’ve seen some drop in people’s interest and attention,” he said. But when he talks to people about the issues that the riots raised for Orange County, “people are quick to remember what happened.”