PERSPECTIVE ON PUBLIC SAFETY : ‘Your Money or Your Life’ : Thousands of felons wait to be sprung onto streets patrolled by fewer cops while politicians play a shell game with budgets.

Nonstop violence seems to be one of the new realities of life in Los Angeles. Most of us don’t see the carnage in our trauma centers firsthand. Are all of those dead and wounded people simply characters in some bizarre citywide theater? No, they’re just the latest victims of violent crime now playing throughout our metropolitan area.

One of the scenarios for today’s L.A. is called “Your Money or Your Life,” and you might be surprised to learn who the bad guys are. They’re not criminals; they’re our elected officials, here and in Sacramento and in Washington. And their political maneuvering just might cost you your life.

The Los Angeles County Jail, for example, offers a through-the-looking-glass view of our community’s metamorphosis. Twenty-five years ago, half of its population was men afflicted by alcoholism, down on their luck and methodically plucked off the streets where they were seen as a community eyesore. Sobered, healed and passing through another cycle of incarceration, they were mainstreamed with other inmates. Their presence added stability to a population of petty criminals, marijuana users, drug addicts, burglars, robbers and even some murder suspects. Jails were still tough; they were easy to get into and hard to get out of. And while the experience wasn’t pleasant, it was generally safe and tolerable.

That was then. Today, jails are hard to get into. Prisoners don’t stay long. The drunks simply live and die on the streets. In jail, they have been replaced by hard-core, institutionalized felons. They are mainly young men, most of them poorly educated; few have held jobs. Many suffer serious mental illness. Of the approximately 22,000 souls in the Los Angeles County Jail on any given day, more than 1,000 stand accused of murder.

The county jail is a sea of angry humanity: carjackers, ATM-machine specialists, stalkers, automatic-weapons experts, “hot-prowl” burglars and illicit-drug sales veterans. Too many of them are members of organizations allied in criminal enterprise, gangs that compete among themselves for power. They group along ethnic and neighborhood lines. On the streets, they enjoy the utility of free-fire zones. Inside, they fight with truncheon and shank. They are turning parts of our communities into battle zones.

Jails are seldom of much interest to the public. But make them start to disappear and suddenly they become more relevant. One Los Angeles County jail has closed and three more are scheduled to follow, which could put 7,500 inmates on the streets. That’s what happens when the bickering between political factions in Sacramento and Los Angeles so blinds the combatants that the only goal is winning, even if public safety is sacrificed.

Jail closures are the starting point for what is hoped to be the least harmful response to this year’s anticipated budget cuts. The county jail system, weakened by an $83.3-million cut last year, faces forced closures because of a pending cut of at least $58 million in the Sheriff’s budget; more likely, the final cut will be $108 million. In a few days, the department will be 1,000 deputies smaller than it was at this time last year. Another 1,000 could quickly follow.

California is in deep economic trouble. It has been slowly disassembling its educational and social-services delivery systems. As revenues shrink, public-safety agencies have become targets of opportunity for politicians hard-pressed to keep their favorite causes alive and well. Far from supporting the American dream, the California political dialogue of the last few years now forecasts an urban horror story. People have been voting on this one with their feet.

Some of the recent criticism of law enforcement is deserved. Some of it is not. In any event, the wholesale attacks on law enforcement have brought together powerful special-interest groups and some self-serving politicians. The common thread seems to be an anti-law enforcement agenda, the bully pulpit and an opportunity for power.

Law-enforcement budgets tend to be large because public safety is a primary responsibility of government. It’s no wonder that their budgets have suddenly become attractive targets. And, it is no coincidence that at a time when the beneficiaries of fat-filled pork barrels despair the shrinking of their largess, they’ve begun to notice where the scarce revenue dollars are.

Our elected officials know that there are solutions to the budget dilemma. They are relatively short-term and can see California though its economic catastrophe. There will be some small cost to the public, but that is far more tolerable than the ugly and dangerous quality of life in store for us as a result of a failure of leadership.

As hotly debated as the solutions for the budgetary shortfalls may be, the principal players in the legislative and executive branches of state and local governments have struggled to keep the public safety impacts out of the debate. Clearly, there is a fear that such disclosure may wake up the electorate. What is most alarming, however, is the brazenness of a political leadership that is willing to actually tear down our public-safety apparatus to protect their reelection.

Your money or your life? It sort of looks that way, doesn’t it?