Local Lawmakers Say Anti-Crime Bill Is Too Weak

Orange County’s conservative congressmen pride themselves on being a law-and-order bunch. But they are likely to snub a mammoth crime package due for a vote in the House this week--not because they oppose a tough anti-crime bill, but because they think this isn’t it.

“This is aptly named a crime bill because what the Democrats have done is a crime,” Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) fumed Friday as the House braced for a week of partisan brawling. “It has Bill Clinton’s fingerprints all over it.”

Democrats sponsoring the package say it offers some deliverance to a frightened public by expanding the federal death penalty, putting 100,000 police officers on the nation’s streets over the next five years, building prisons and allowing 13- and 14-year-olds to be tried as adults for some crimes.

It gets tough on crime, they say, without sacrificing rehabilitation and prevention, providing for everything from increased drug treatment to midnight youth basketball games.

But conservative Republicans, most Orange County delegates among them, complain the bill would more likely impede executions, hamstring police and squander on social experiments money better used to build more prisons.

“We need to get a tough crime bill out this year, but this is not a tough crime bill,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) said in an interview.

The bill, endorsed by President Clinton, poses a dilemma for Orange County lawmakers. Some provisions--mainly more police and more prisons--are popular in Orange County cities where fear of crime is at a peak. A version of this piece of mega-legislation--it is 21 bills rolled into one--passed overwhelmingly in the Senate last fall.

A no vote could leave a lawmaker with some explaining to do.

“This could be interpreted by my opposition as a vote against crime control. I would hope the people in my district know I am very supportive of a strong piece of crime legislation,” Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside) said.

“Now the onus is on us to explain our position,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach).

Indeed, leading Democrats have all but defied a Republican threat to delay passage of a crime package in this political climate. “People want us to get on with this bill and not talk it to death,” Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said recently.

But Orange County delegates said they could not in good conscience support a bill that so concerns them, less for what is in it than what is not: It does not, they say, reform the so-called exclusionary rule, which prohibits the admission of illegally seized evidence in criminal cases.

It does not require that convicted criminals serve 85% of their terms, as Packard proposes. Currently, he said, the average inmate serves about one-third of the sentence imposed.

Worst of all, the lawmakers contend, the legislation continues to allow death-row appeals and permits consideration of racial bias in those appeals.

Still, they vowed to keep an open mind. Thirty-six amendments remain to be debated before the bill goes to a final vote, possibly as early as next week.

But in the House, dominated by Democrats for 40 years, many Republicans were less than optimistic that any meaningful amendment endorsed by their party would survive.

“It is hard for me to support something I think is a fraud perpetrated by liberal Democrats to make people think they care about crime,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

“I can predict that next year we will not feel the impact of this legislation if we pass it as it is,” said Dornan, who has recently taken to attending daily Mass because, he says, he is so worried about the country in the hands of Democrats.

“It will not take a bite out of crime. It will not put a dent in crime,” he said. “What’s the sense of going through this horrible feel-good charade?”