Rewards OKd in Police Deaths : Crime: Governor authorizes $50,000 in each of two cases. He calls for increasing the maximum the state may offer to $100,000.

One day after attending the funeral of slain Los Angeles Police Officer Christy Lynne Hamilton, Gov. Pete Wilson signed executive orders Tuesday offering two $50,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers of two other Southern California police officers.

Wilson offered rewards in the deaths of Howard Ellsworth Dallies Jr. of Garden Grove and Martin Ganz of Manhattan Beach, both gunned down in the line of duty. Nine law enforcement officers were killed in Southern California during the past year; only the killers of Dallies and Ganz remain at large.

Flanked by Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and several Los Angeles-area law enforcement authorities, Wilson also announced that he is asking the Legislature to introduce a bill to amend the state penal code to give him the authority to offer rewards of up to $100,000. The code limits such rewards to $50,000.

“An attack on a peace officer is an attack on all of us,” Wilson said at a Downtown Los Angeles news conference held in the shadow of a memorial that honors nearly 200 slain officers. “They have given their lives for us. Now we must keep faith with them.”

Since 1992, 22 California peace officers have been killed while on duty. Hamilton, a 45-year-old rookie and mother of two, was shot last week by a Northridge teen-ager who had killed his father, then waited to ambush arriving police officers. Hamilton had graduated from the Police Academy just four days before she died.

Ganz, a five-year veteran of the Manhattan Beach Police Department, was shot Dec. 27 while making a late night traffic stop outside the Manhattan Village shopping mall. He was 29. Dallies, who had served on the Garden Grove Police Department for nine years, was gunned down by a motorcyclist on a residential street on March 9, 1993. He was 36.

Wilson is running for reelection. During his term in office, he has offered four previous rewards totaling $120,000. The money for the rewards comes from the state’s general fund.

“We believe larger awards can attract more tips to crack a tough case,” Wilson said, adding that by offering larger sums, “we . . . send the message that we won’t rest until cop killers are arrested, prosecuted and given the penalty they deserve--the death penalty.”

According to Dr. Debra Glaser, the LAPD’s acting chief police psychologist, rewards can be very helpful, even in instances when tipsters worry that coming forward will place them in danger.

“There are some people who would probably call to help if they could, regardless of whether there is a reward. Then there are some people who don’t want to get involved, no matter how big a reward is offered. But for the people in the middle, the desire not to get involved can sometimes be overridden by money,” Glaser said.

“I guess some people need to be motivated or need to be pushed,” she added. “But that’s better than people not calling at all.”

Cmdr. David J. Gascon, a spokesman for the LAPD, agreed.

“Sometimes it may take a significant amount of money to break information free,” he said, adding that the rewards announced Tuesday were valuable both for the tips they may yield and for the point they underscore. “Elected officials and the community at large are speaking with one voice, saying, ‘We can’t allow police officers to be victims.’ ”

Bill Brownell, co-founder of an anonymous tip hot line called WeTip, said that 62% of the people who call decline the $1,000 reward that is offered for turning in criminals. But 38% accept it, and Brownell believes that the bigger the reward, the more tipsters call in.

“The people who put out fires in oil fields get paid a fantastic amount of money because of the extreme danger they’re in,” he said. “The same condition applies here.”