Plan for Defusing Tensions During Two Trials Praised : Mediation: Some say the volunteer patrols must be paired with a powerful law enforcement capability.

Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan to use community volunteers to defuse strong feelings during two controversial trials next year won praise Friday from Los Angeles political leaders--but some warned that a powerful police response will await anyone who resorts to violence.

In a closed-door meeting Friday with members of the City Council, County Board of Supervisors and state Legislature, Bradley described his plan to send hundreds of volunteers into the street to control rumors and allow residents to vent their frustrations during the two racially charged trials.

Such volunteer mediation has met with some success in Miami and New York, two cities that have had to contend with racial divisiveness and civil unrest, officials there said Friday.

Los Angeles’ Neighbor to Neighbor program is the centerpiece of Bradley’s plan to keep a lid on the city during the upcoming trials. First, four white police officers will be tried in the beating of Rodney G. King, who is black. Then three young black men face charges of assaulting Reginald O. Denny, a white trucker, as the riots broke out.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas--who serves the South-Central community that was most heavily damaged in last spring’s riots--said the volunteer patrols will be “surprisingly helpful.”

“Preparedness must have an emphasis on community involvement,” Ridley-Thomas said. “An overemphasis on law enforcement is misplaced. The emphasis must be on prevention, not reaction.”

But others involved in the morning briefing session said the police backup to the volunteer effort is the most crucial aspect of preparing for the trials.

“A certain amount of mediation is fine,” said county Supervisor Ed Edelman. “But, in the end . . . the most important resource is having adequate law enforcement to assure that disturbances can be quelled immediately.”

Councilman Joel Wachs said police training and planning should be well publicized, along with the Neighbor to Neighbor plan.

“People who are thinking of doing something wrong should know they should forget about it,” Wachs said. “On the other hand . . . we are going to work with people constructively to avoid problems.”

The 18 elected officials received assurances from Police Chief Willie L. Williams and Sheriff Sherman Block that law enforcement will be better prepared for any unrest.

Williams described the Los Angeles Police Department as “70% to 80% better prepared” than it was last spring. Block said training has been improved and mutual aid pacts between police agencies have been ironed out since the riots--when the law enforcement response was slow and fragmented. More than 50 people died and $775 million in insurance losses were recorded in the riots.

The city will hire 10 coordinators next month to begin recruiting volunteers--including parents, gang members, teachers and ministers--who will visit shopping centers, housing projects and schools each day of the trials.

The mayor’s program is modeled, in part, on New York City’s Increase the Peace Volunteer Corps, a group created by Mayor David N. Dinkins in response to that city’s racial upheavals.

New York officials credit the 750-member volunteer corps with helping to maintain calm last summer during the racially charged grand jury inquiry into the shooting of a young man from the Dominican Republic by a white police officer. The city’s Washington Heights neighborhood erupted in violence after the man’s death, but remained calm several months later, when the grand jury cleared the officer of wrongdoing.

Volunteers focused their efforts on “rumor control” and educating the largely immigrant community about the grand jury proceedings, said the program’s executive director, Robert Sherman.

“We also put out the message that there was a choice,” Sherman said. “People could organize politically or just go out and blow up their neighborhood.”

New York’s $750,000 budget for the volunteer program was used largely to provide volunteers with a minimum 25 hours training in dispute resolution, cultural sensitivity and community organizing.

Los Angeles has committed only $60,000 to hire 10 coordinators, but mayoral spokeswoman Vallee Bunting said the city “will find whatever resources necessary, in dollars or volunteer time, to get the job done.”

In Miami, a city convulsed by violence several times in the last decade, police have formed community response teams of neighbors who regularly walk the streets, listening to complaints and concerns.

“Community walks, shaking hands, listening to concerns and suggestions, and bringing those back to the police is the answer,” said Police Maj. Arthur Washington.

Dade County’s Community Relations Board has also sponsored a Crisis Prevention Team, composed of 75 county and municipal employees who volunteer for extra work in the communities they serve. The volunteers were out this week, after two Miami police officers were cleared of killing a man whom they forcibly restrained during a fire last summer, said Aristides Sosa, director of Dade’s Department of Community Affairs.

There was no violence despite the fact that emotions ran high in the city’s Wynwood section.

Times special correspondent Mike Clary contributed to this story from Miami.