Police Union Agrees to Halt Billboard Campaign; Contract Talks to Resume

Leaders of the Los Angeles police union said Tuesday that they will take down their controversial carjacking billboards in order to revive contract talks with the city and acknowledge the recent shooting deaths of two Japanese teen-agers.

During a private meeting Monday night with Mayor Richard Riordan, the president of the Police Protective League agreed to stop the billboard campaign. The mayor, in turn, agreed to reconvene contract talks that came to a sudden halt last week when the billboards went up.

The ads, which show a woman being carjacked by an armed assailant, are part of the league’s campaign to tarnish the city’s image, rattle its tourist industry and bring visibility to the union’s cause. Critics considered the campaign inappropriate in a city increasingly worried about crime--even more so after the real-life carjacking of the two teen-agers.

The union, which represents about 7,000 LAPD officers, agreed that the international attention that the shooting has drawn soured their week-old billboard campaign. The billboards will come down today or tomorrow, they said.

“The tragic murders of Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura have reinforced the need for the city’s leaders and the Police Protective League to work together to restore public confidence and the international reputation of Los Angeles by improving the working conditions of the Los Angeles Police Department,” according to a statement from league President Danny Staggs.

Ito and Matsuura, both 19-year-old Marymount College students, were shot in the head Friday night in the parking lot of a San Pedro supermarket. They died Sunday. In Japan, the shooting has become a symbol of America’s violent culture.

Riordan met Monday with the families of the slain students, and afterward described the billboards as “grotesque” and “stupid.”

The ads were part of a three-pronged campaign by the league to pressure the city into a contract settlement.

Last month, the union sent brochures to tourist officials that highlighted crime statistics. The 21 billboards went up last Tuesday. The union had also threatened to distribute to tourism officials a videotape using riot footage to show the lawlessness of Los Angeles.

Besides stirring up public criticism, the union’s aggressive campaign prompted an angry Riordan to cancel negotiating sessions and withdraw a contract proposal that he said included a salary increase.

On Tuesday, Riordan said he welcomed the union’s decision to de-escalate the dispute.

“The police union has come to agree with me that good faith negotiations belong at the bargaining table, not in billboards, brochures or other public relations tactics,” he said.

Some members of the City Council, the body which must ultimately approve any agreement, also had been angered by the campaign.

“I think the billboards were grotesque before the shooting in San Pedro,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who is a member of the city’s negotiating committee. “There was no way a pay raise could be justified in the face of such a campaign.”

Still, union officials on Tuesday refused to call the tactic a mistake, insisting that the billboards accomplished their main goal--attracting widespread public attention to the contract dispute.

They said the billboards also were designed to protest controversial work-rule changes proposed by Riordan, especially a plan to consolidate three ranks of detectives into a single classification and allow greater latitude for Chief Willie L. Williams to transfer them to patrol duties.

The union, claiming an important concession, said Riordan agreed during his private meeting with Staggs to withdraw the proposed personnel changes from the negotiating table. But the mayor said everything remains under consideration.

“We can now move to the bargaining table, where . . . issues to be considered will include wages, hours, work rules, incentives, contract terms, deployment and management rights,” Riordan said.

By taking down the billboards, union officials said they hoped to quickly bring to a close a labor dispute that has dragged on for nearly two years. On the sidelines, other city employee unions are watching the dispute closely, hoping to win new contracts as well.