City Wants to Shut Palisades Park at Night : Ordinance: Critics say the proposal, designed to curb drug traffic, would serve only to disperse the homeless population to other areas to sleep.

The homeless and their advocates were left out in the cold this week when the Santa Monica City Council backed a plan to close Palisades Park at night, ostensibly to reduce drug traffic there.

By a 5-2 vote Monday, the council ordered the city attorney’s office to draft an ordinance to close the cliff-top park from midnight to 5 a.m., dealing a harsh blow to the many people who sleep there.

Several council members said the measure, expected to be adopted within the next several weeks as a one-year emergency ordinance, may be expanded to include other city parks, depending on neighborhood sentiments.

“Leadership does not come easy, but this is the right thing to do,” said Councilman Kelly Olsen, who spearheaded the proposal.

Homeless advocates as well as dissenting council members Judy Abdo and Tony Vazquez angrily labeled the measure a misguided quick fix that will have little impact on drug dealers and serve only to disperse the city’s homeless population to other parts of the city, including parking lots, the Third Street Promenade and residents’ front lawns.

“I can just see the drug dealers now saying, ‘It’s time to go off duty--it’s past midnight,’ ” said homeless advocate Jerry Rubin.

The proposed ordinance follows the passage last year of a largely unenforceable measure that bans sleeping in city parks. Another measure aimed at preventing mass feedings in city parks is being challenged in court.

Those measures, coupled with the new proposal, have heightened concerns in liberal quarters that Olsen and others are willing to go after the homeless in order to appear tough on crime.

Olsen acknowledged--and dismissed--the concerns. He stressed that the proposed ordinance is a necessary response to rampant drug trafficking in the park, where, according to police, there were 502 narcotics arrests last year.

“Some of the homeless activists think it’s an attempt to get rid of them or hassle them, and it’s just absurd,” Olsen said.

Olsen’s proposal won the backing of Police Chief James Butts and the department in general, which has long contended that drug dealers hide among the park’s homeless population, making arrests difficult.

Support is also evident in the community at large, where many noted that the concept of closing parks at night hardly breaks new policy ground.

“Every other city around here believes it makes sense to close their parks,” said William Mortensen, a member of the now-disbanded city Task Force on Homelessness. “Either the other cities are out of sync with reality or Santa Monica is.”

Rubin, however, argued that closing the popular park deprives the homeless and general public alike of a city resource. He urged Santa Monicans not to give in to “the terrorism of the drug dealers.”

“Why should we give up the right to walk through the park?” he said. “After a movie on the Third Street Promenade, I’d like to stroll through the park with my wife.”

Left unclear was whether the crime problem is severe enough in the park between midnight and 5 a.m. to warrant closing it. Councilman Tony Vazquez cited the absence of such statistical information as his major reason for voting against the measure.

“I just thought it was really inappropriate for us to make a decision without all the facts,” Vazquez said. “It sounds like they’re (trying) in a roundabout way to close down the parks to exclude the homeless.”

A hearing on the proposed ordinance and whether to expand its reach to other parks has not been scheduled.