Extra Police Credited for Drop in Crime : Law enforcement: Homicide, robbery figures decline significantly in the week before verdicts. Added security costs have already topped $8 million.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams announced Monday that about $4 million will be needed to pay for overtime costs and other expenditures that went into beefing up police operations at the close of the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

The chief also disclosed dramatic new crime statistics showing street violence--particularly murders, assaults and robberies--dropped significantly last week as police increased their street presence in anticipation of the verdicts.

According to figures supplied by other major law-enforcement agencies, the cost for the massive deployment ordered as the trial came to its close has already topped $8 million.

During a press conference at the Parker Center police headquarters, Williams used the new crime statistics to urge passage today of Proposition 1 on the city ballot, which would provide the LAPD with 1,000 new officers.

He said the measure would allow him to deploy the same number of patrol officers as he did last week, when he said violent crime decreased by 12% across the city.

Homicides dropped by 20% during the first five days of jury deliberations, he said, and assaults and robberies each fell by 10%. In addition, police reported receiving only 15,000 calls for help on Saturday, down from a typical Saturday level of as much as 19,000. The LAPD has not released crime figures for the weekend, when the department went into full mobilization.

“If you put the new officers in uniform and on the streets, in cars, on foot beats, on bicycles, wherever they are necessary, you can make a community safe,” Williams said. “It can reduce crime. It can reduce the fear of crime.”

When deliberations began, the department added 600 officers to street duty. The 1,000 additional officers promised by Proposition 1 would bring a comparable increase in street patrols, Williams said.

If the proposition fails, the chief added, it would be impossible to pay for the higher level of uniformed officers. He said that it cost between $200,000 and $300,000 to pay for overtime for each of the seven days the jury deliberated the case. Added to that, he said, was about $1.8 million for full police mobilization on Saturday, the day the jury announced guilty verdicts against two of the four officers charged in the King case.

But the civil unrest predicted by many never materialized. Nor, said Williams, were threats against police officers carried out. While the increased deployment was generally applauded by residents, some expressed fears that a massive show of force would heighten tensions.

“Additional officers are not a threat,” Williams countered. “We were not there to hold certain segments of our community hostage, to keep people indoors. Instead, people stopped and talked. They greeted each other. They found out some first names. We began to develop some relationships.”

Williams closed down his emergency operations center Monday afternoon. And he pledged that overtime paychecks will be given to officers within a month, unlike last year when they were delayed after the riots.

“I did get a commitment from members of the City Council and the mayor that they would pay for this overtime and that was never ever an issue,” he said. “I’m really glad to say that dollars never became an issue in providing the level of safety.”

Some of the money, he added, will come from the federal government and some from the city. “But we’re going to try to pay it,” he pledged.

Other law enforcement agencies were also adding up their overtime cost figures, such as Brea, which will pay about $1,700 for the two extra patrol officers assigned to the streets on the weekend.

“Without knowing what the verdict was going to be, we pretty much had to be conservative and take precautions,” said acting Brea Police Chief James E. Oman.

A total of about 300 extra officers throughout Orange County were called in for overtime, but most departments have not yet calculated the expense.

Orange County also was quieter than usual, some police departments reporting fewer calls than on previous spring weekends. Police attributed that to anxiety about possible violence and to the increased police presence.

The calm that prevailed in Los Angeles meant that authorities never called for any police officers from Orange County or for members of the National Guard, who assembled last week and trained at the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center.

About 600 troops were on standby until late Sunday, when they were dismissed, Maj. Pat Antosh said.

The state will pay those troops a total of about $42,600 for the week, a National Guard spokesman in Sacramento said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Monday estimated its costs for overtime alone since the day the King jury began deliberations at $3.4 million.

The department said massive overtime was incurred in the county jails because experience with the first King trial last year indicated that tensions would be particularly high there. Some prisoners were temporarily separated by race in a move to head off trouble.

Division Chief Larry Anderson, commander of the emergency operations center, said that, like the LAPD found, violent crime was actually below normal in the communities patrolled by the sheriff.

A spokesman in the National Guard’s Sacramento headquarters said the cost of the deployment probably will approach $1 million by the time everything is closed down on Wednesday.

“If you compare that number to what it cost Los Angeles for the riots last year, it’s cheap,” Col. Roger Goodrich said.

Times staff writers Eric Young, Kenneth Reich and Daniel Weintraub contributed to this article.