Riordan Unveils Plan for Police : Law enforcement: Mayor’s proposal calls for hiring thousands of LAPD officers and shifting others to street patrols. Critics object that financing is not addressed.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Wednesday offered a sweeping plan to bolster public safety by hiring thousands of new police officers and shifting the existing force heavily toward street patrol, but the proposal does not spell out how the massive buildup will be funded.

In his most important and carefully staged speech since taking office July 1, Riordan, backed by rows of uniformed LAPD officers, said his crime-fighting plan would “lift the cloud of fear that casts its shadow over our lives.”

The “Project Safety L.A.” plan, developed with Police Chief Willie L. Williams, seeks to deliver on the cornerstone promise of Riordan’s campaign--that he would lead a rebirth of a battered and frightened city by making streets safe.

The proposal calls for a dramatic boost in the LAPD’s patrol force over the next five years--starting this fiscal year with a 70% increase in officers assigned to the streets. Initially, the plan relies on the payment of millions of dollars for officer overtime and for “buying back” regularly scheduled days off from officers who opt to come in on a holiday--for pay--rather than take the day off. This would be followed in subsequent years by sharply increasing officer hiring, using civilians to free up hundreds of desk-bound officers and recruiting officers from other police departments.

The proposal also calls for improving the LAPD’s antiquated equipment and for contracting with a local college to expand the department’s training capacity. Details of those matters were not included in Riordan’s televised address from the Police Academy.

The plan would increase the current 7,600-officer force to the “equivalent” of an 11,225-officer field force in four years, Riordan said, although the actual number of sworn LAPD officers would climb only to about 9,700. That is short of the 10,500-officer force Riordan promised in a bold gambit during the campaign, when he told voters he would not seek reelection if he failed to expand the force by 3,000 additional officers.

The plan released Wednesday was able to showcase impressive numbers because it largely avoided the topic of actual police officers on the payroll, and because it spread the expansion over five years, rather than four. By shifting from actual sworn officers to “full-time equivalent” positions, Riordan could assert that his plan would yield the equivalent of an 11,935-officer force by 1997-98. The actual number by that time would stand at 10,455.

Riordan contended Wednesday that the fine points of his pledge--or whether he would forgo a reelection bid--were beside the point. “This is too serious to play a game of ‘gotcha’ on,” he said. “You can analyze it whichever way you want, but the bottom line is that we’re here to come up with a plan to make this city safe. We think this is a great plan.”

Overall, the plan drew praise for defining the city’s public safety goals, including making street policing a clear priority at the LAPD, which traditionally has prided itself on its many elite and specialized units of officers not involved in routine patrol.

“I think it’s an excellent blueprint,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee. “This is a rational, responsible plan.”

But conspicuously missing--and drawing immediate City Hall criticism--was any discussion of the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to fund the most ambitious LAPD buildup in decades. Riordan said he would use a reserve fund he set aside in the current budget to pay the $15.3 million needed this year. But he refused to say how much the remainder of the plan would cost or how he intends to pay for it.

“All I can say is you have to trust the chief, myself, my staff, that this has been well-thought-out,” Riordan said.

Complained Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas: “How serious or complete is a public policy that does not evaluate the fiscal impact? That is the decisive question.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, one of the city’s leading budget experts, said that although the mayor and police chief had “laid out a road map to increase our department from 7,600 officers to the number we need,” the second hurdle of financing the plan “isn’t even in sight yet. . . . I’m not optimistic (Riordan) is going to find the funding.”

Still, Councilwoman Laura Chick, a member of the Public Safety Committee, said the mayor’s proposal moves the law enforcement debate in Los Angeles forward--to “an implementation stage.”

Indeed, City Hall sources said that although Riordan may take some political heat for falling short of his 10,500-officer goal--and sidestepping the tricky issues of financing--simply presenting the plan will strengthen his hand in dealing with the City Council. That is especially true, sources said, because it comes with the backing of a police chief who is popular with the public.

“It brings us to the issue of how we are going to do this,” Chick said, adding that council members now will feel more pressure to become engaged with Riordan in the search for funding. Chick would not rule out higher taxes, but said they should be a last resort.

“I will discuss new ways of raising revenue, including that word, ‘taxes,’ after we have explored other ways,” she said.

Riordan would say only that he hopes to fund the plan by streamlining the city bureaucracy and collecting new revenues from the airport. “The bottom line is we have to do it,” he said. Though not ruling out new taxes, he said they would be a last resort because it is “self-defeating” in a city reeling from a prolonged economic downturn.

Riordan acknowledged at a luncheon with Times editors and writers that the lack of a funding plan could raise credibility questions. “My neck is on the line,” he said. Still, he said he will not identify additional funding sources for the police buildup until he completes next year’s city budget in the spring. That budget is estimated to be $200 million in the red, even before the huge expense of the police expansion.

Braude said the proposal outlined by Riordan will cost hundreds of millions of dollars--roughly $300 million over five years, by Braude’s estimate. Other quick calculations by council offices and the police union also produced estimates of $100 million to $300 million.

Existing sources of city revenue cannot handle such huge new bills, Braude said. New taxes will be required, he added.

“There’s no free lunch,” Braude said. “We have to do this. For us not to do it would be a great tragedy for this city.”

Leaders of the city’s police union were skeptical despite Riordan’s claims during a news conference that rank-and-file officers are pleased with the plan.

David Zeigler, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, turned down an invitation to join Riordan and other officials at the speech and said later that he and other league officials “have some major concerns” about the proposal.

Zeigler questioned some of the estimates in the report, noted that it failed to deliver on Riordan’s campaign pledge to expand the LAPD by 3,000 officers in four years and disputed the argument advanced by Williams and Riordan that paying officers for working overtime and holidays would stem attrition. Instead, Zeigler, whose union is pressuring Riordan and other city officials for pay increases, said city resources would be better used to give officers a raise, a move that he contends would go much further in slowing the department’s rate of attrition.

“How can we expect to keep police officers in this city, how can we expect to get transfers . . . if we don’t have a contract?” Zeigler said. “You have to take care of your current employees before you explore all these other things.”

Former Councilman Michael Woo, who was defeated in the mayoral race by Riordan, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the release of the plan proves that Riordan’s oft-stated campaign pledge to lease Los Angeles International Airport to hire 3,000 police was a “golden panacea.”

“It seems he is throwing the challenge back in the laps of the City Council to raise additional money” for more police, Woo said of the Riordan plan.

Several city officials noted that the plan draws on ideas that have been floating around City Hall for years. The proposal to move uniformed officers from desk jobs onto the street by replacing them with civilian clerks dates back at least a decade and was promoted by Woo.

And the call for greater funding of the police overtime account was a regular rallying point for now-retired City Councilman Ernani Bernardi. Another opponent of Riordan’s in the mayor’s race, Bernardi was never able to persuade his colleagues to expand the overtime account.

There has been no consensus among the city’s lawmakers about how to pay for more officers. Some more conservative members, such as Councilman Hal Bernson, contend that money for more police can come from cutting or eliminating other city services. Others, like Councilman Richard Alatorre, say the city has to face up to the need for new taxes or fees to pay for more police.

Seeking to rally public support for his plan, which Wednesday’s reaction indicated will face enormous financial and political pitfalls, Riordan returned to his stark campaign imagery of a crime-plagued city.

Speaking to an auditorium filled with his political appointees, Neighborhood Watch leaders and police cadets, Riordan recounted recent deadly carjacking incidents and spoke of the “vague but permeating fear that such horrible attacks might happen to any one of us.”

As he spoke of hiring more officers and giving them more equipment, Riordan was interrupted eight times with applause--a well-choreographed kickoff to a campaign of public appearances and community hearings by Riordan, Williams and other administration officials to build public support for the proposal.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.

* VOLUNTEERS AT LAPD: Value of civilians’ work tops $460,000 this year. B1

Reinforcing the Force

Mayor Richard Riordan’s plan to increase the LAPD was devised using the concept of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. These include new hires, reassigned existing personnel, and officers earning overtime and extra pay for working holidays and days off. The actual number of officers, however, would grow more slowly and fall short of Riordan’s promise to build a 10,500-officer force by the end of his four-year term.

FTE Actual Fiscal Year Positions Officers 1993-94 8,376 7,875 1994-95 9,405 8,325 1995-96 10,295 9,035 1996-97 11,225 9,745 1997-98 11,935 10,455

Positions are calculated on the current base of 7,600 officers.

Source: LAPD Public Safety Plan