Bradley Plan Seeks to Calm City During Trials : Volunteers: Teams working at community level will try to avert unrest over the King and Denny cases.

Hundreds of ministers, gang members, social workers and others will fan out across Los Angeles during two emotionally charged trials next year in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the violence that followed verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, under a plan to be announced today.

The teams of volunteers are the centerpiece of Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan to keep the city calm during the retrial of four officers accused of beating King and the trial of three young men accused of assaulting trucker Reginald O. Denny at the beginning of the riots.

From the first day of those trials, volunteers from the “Neighbor to Neighbor” program will visit shopping malls, schools and housing projects to encourage a constructive venting of emotions. They will monitor the mood of residents and try to prevent misinterpretations of the proceedings that might inflame the community, Bradley’s aides said Thursday.

The mayor and other leaders acknowledged that they were caught off guard and unprepared by last spring’s riots, the deadliest U.S. disturbance of this century.

The mayor will unveil the plan today at a City Hall meeting with members of the City Council, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and state Legislature. He also will ask the elected leaders for their recommendations.

“The idea is that we can understand what people are thinking so that we can adjust our plans if we have to,” said Marcela Howell, special counselor to the mayor. “And we want to make sure that people can talk about and understand the trials so that feelings and frustrations don’t build up.”

Initial reaction from community leaders was positive, although they cautioned that the volunteers should be carefully chosen and trained to assure that they do not further inflame opinions on the two high-profile cases.

The first of two trials worrying city leaders is the civil rights prosecution of the four white Los Angeles police officers accused of beating King, a black man. The officers were acquitted in state court of most counts, unleashing the riots that took more than 50 lives and caused $775 million in insurance losses.

The officers’ retrial in federal court is expected to begin in February--and some legal experts say federal law will make it even more difficult to obtain convictions than in the state trial.

A trial is to begin this spring of three men accused of beating Denny, a truck driver, near one of the riot flash points.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Bradley’s plan is similar to one used by New York Mayor David Dinkins to quell racial disturbances--an approach that has met with some success.

He noted that the Los Angeles volunteer plan is buttressed by increased preparedness by the LAPD aimed at responding more quickly to any unrest.

Volunteers will come from every walk of life and are expected to counter the post-riot perception that many traditional leaders had fallen out of touch with the mood of the city, said Vallee Bunting, the mayor’s press deputy.

“Now we want to make sure we reach all segments of the community,” she said.

The mayor’s office will meet next week with dozens of community organizations to begin more detailed planning. Ten coordinators will be hired through the city’s Community Development Department, at a cost of $60,000, to help organize volunteers, Bunting said.

The program will recruit and train as many volunteers as possible, relying heavily on community organizations for advice on how to approach gang members and others for cooperation, according to the mayor’s proposal.

The size and composition of each team is unclear, but the volunteers will be sent throughout the city, particularly to areas where young people congregate. The teams will take to the streets for the duration of both trials, not just after verdicts, as was planned after the first trial of the four LAPD officers.

Bradley believes that residents will respond and listen to one another because of the “positive energy” that has emerged from efforts to rebuild the city, Howell said.

“There is this whole energy of people helping each other--cooking meals for each other and baby-sitting--after the riots,” Howell said. “That is the kind of energy we want to harness and expand on.”

Several community activists said they believe the mayor’s plan is a good start on preparing for the two trials.

“I think this is an excellent idea,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles. “It will engage people at a variety of levels.”

Hicks said it was clear that before the riots “there had been a schism between the people and organizations and there was not an adequate gauge of how things would happen following the first trial.”

The Rev. E.V. Hill of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in South-Central Los Angeles said the proposal to draft a variety of volunteers would be effective because “unfortunately, in our neighborhoods, we don’t have a single voice who can quiet the waters.”

But Hill cautioned that gang members and other non-traditional leaders will need assurances that they are not being co-opted by the Establishment against the community’s best interests. “You have to be careful there, because they don’t want to believe they are going to be used to help cover up a bad situation,” Hill said.

The volunteer plan starts on sound footing because it will allow for rumor control and provide a sounding board for complaints, two of the key elements of mediating disputes, said Steve Valdivia, executive director of Community Youth Gang Services.

Valdivia said his anti-gang organization, the region’s largest, will offer to help the city screen and train volunteers.

Fabiani said that the volunteer groups are expected to become testing grounds for new leaders.

“All of this has a wider goal: To identify emerging leadership and organize the community to involve people for years,” he said, “not just for the duration of the trials.”

The program is also intended to draw on lessons learned earlier this year. While the first trial of the officers was going on last spring, the mayor’s office discussed plans with about a dozen churches to send peacemakers into the community after the verdicts. But mayhem spread so quickly that the volunteers would have been in danger and the plan was dropped, Howell said.

“It obviously wasn’t enough,” she said of that plan.