Wilson Crime Summit to Have Hard-Line Focus

With his advisers convinced that voter fear of crime will drive the election, Gov. Pete Wilson opens a two-day crime summit in Hollywood today that will be dominated by law-and-order advocates and crime victims, and light on voices for rehabilitation.

The summit, postponed last month because of the Northridge earthquake, will be held at the First Presbyterian Community Center, a 700-person hall usually reserved for Bible studies and receptions.

The invitation-only event will begin with an early morning memorial for crime victims and will be weighted throughout with proponents of the “three strikes” movement that seeks to imprison habitual criminals for life.

Panels will include Marc Klaas, father of Polly Klaas, the Petaluma 12-year-old whose abduction and murder fueled the latest wave of public outrage over crime, and Mike Reynolds, whose daughter was murdered in 1992 and who is the sponsor of the “three strikes and you’re out” initiative proposed for the November ballot.

Harriet Salarno, founder of Justice for Murdered Victims, will be among the parents of slain children who will speak at the opening ceremony. Salarno has been active in anti-crime efforts since her daughter, Catina Rose, was murdered in 1979.

Public concern about crime is running high and Salarno hopes that in this election year the summit will add to pressure on lawmakers to approve more anti-crime legislation.

“Everything is starting to peak,” Salarno said. “People have been crying out. They want public safety. They don’t want to have to look over their shoulder. The timing is perfect. We’ve got to take advantage of the timing.”

The cast of political leaders scheduled to attend includes Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), and many other state legislators. Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block and Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams will be there. In all, 5,000 invitations were sent. Organizers expect 1,200 people to attend.

Wilson aides say the two-day talkfest is aimed at developing consensus on anti-crime legislation and focusing pressure on the Legislature to pass bills that in past years have been blocked by the Democratic majority.

“Every Californian has a fundamental right not to become a crime victim, not to live in fear,” Wilson said, explaining his reason for convening the summit.

Among those not invited are Wilson’s Democratic challengers, Treasurer Kathleen Brown and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. The governor’s rivals say the summit will be little more than a campaign event.

“When Republicans screw up the economy, they turn to crime. It’s a time-honored strategy,” said Darry Sragow, Garamendi’s campaign manager. “The economy is in terrible shape and (Wilson) doesn’t want people focused on that.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, a Democrat, also was not invited. An aide to Wilson said Reno, the nation’s top law enforcement official, was not asked to attend because the governor wanted to limit the event to state officials--although one of the scheduled speakers is an assistant U.S. attorney.

The event will be light on liberal voices. But the governor’s office did make a late addition by inviting Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Ripston will appear on a panel with Reynolds, Rob Bonner, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration under President George Bush; Superior Court Judge Lois Haight, a Justice Department official in the Ronald Reagan Administration, and Kern County Dist. Atty. Ed Jagels, long active in law-and-order efforts.

“There is a small part of me that thinks by appearing I am playing into their hand,” Ripston said. “But I am willing to take a chance. . . . It’s important that somebody says: ‘Wait, this (“three strikes” movement) isn’t going to do what everybody says. It won’t make people safer.’ I’m hoping that I’ll be the voice of reason.”

The summit is being held at a time when the Legislature is rushing to pass anti-crime bills, and when major crime has fallen, down 3.8% in 1993 in California. Even though crime overall fell last year, homicide climbed 2.6%.

“There’s a real intensity,” George Gorton, Wilson’s campaign manager, said of the public’s perception of crime. “I think it’s (because of) the random nature of the violence and the unpredictability of the violence.”

In choosing the location for the summit, Wilson took a cue from Brown, who held a highly publicized economic summit last year at the Biltmore Hotel. The summit is being held in Los Angeles to ensure television coverage in the state’s biggest media market. Los Angeles television stations have no Sacramento-based reporters.

Sean Walsh, who is helping to organize the event for the governor, explained that Hollywood was selected as the summit site for symbolic reasons. It is, he noted, a district “struggling with a crime problem.” The Presbyterian community center was chosen to show that “communities need to be involved” in the fight against crime, he added.

The governor’s staff fretted about holding the summit so soon after the Northridge earthquake. But if Wilson had postponed it further, he would have run into a conflict with Brown’s summit on education next week in San Francisco, and other scheduling problems in March.

“People are very concerned about crime any way you look at it,” Gorton said. Although the quake and its aftermath is a concern, voters “certainly have enough room to focus on both.”

Walsh said that before the event was rescheduled, he checked with Los Angeles police to make certain the summit will not interfere with more pressing disaster-related duties.

The quake has caused some logistic problems. Federal disaster workers have taken up many hotel rooms in Hollywood, and some people scheduled to speak when the conference was set for January could not make it in February.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is among those who was supposed to speak in January, but cannot attend today. Garcetti, an opponent of the “three strikes” initiative, will be at a crime conference in Washington, D.C., his spokeswoman said.

At the governor’s invitation, Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Sterling Norris, who ran against Garcetti in 1992 and endorses the “three strikes” initiative, will be among the panelists.

Long active in crime victims organizations, Norris said he hopes that the summit will add to public outrage over crime, thereby putting more pressure on officials to pass and carry out tough anti-crime laws.

“Unless we enlist the public in the outrage against crime, we are not going to get anything done,” Norris said.

The summit will include sessions on crime’s impact on business, school violence, crimes against women and children, and juvenile crime. There is no scheduled discussion of the impact of increased incarceration on the state budget. The politically touchy issue of gun control will be addressed in the last panel, at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, an outspoken advocate of gun control, will be among the speakers on that panel. He is calling for higher taxes on guns, proficiency tests for anyone buying a gun, and state legislation allowing cities to pass their own gun ordinances. As it is, the state controls gun law--and legislators rarely pass measures limiting access to firearms.