City Leaves Park Drug Problem to Police Chief : Crime: Santa Monica Council rejects plan to control narcotics dealing in Palisades Park by assigning officers there.

The Santa Monica City Council has rejected Councilman Kelly Olsen’s proposal to immediately assign police officers full time to Palisades Park to stop persistent drug dealing in the coastal bluff-top park.

Instead, the council voted 5 to 2 to ask Police Chief James T. Butts to devise his own deployment plan for keeping peace in the park while taking into account public safety needs in other parts of town.

“I can sit here and run down a list of other pockets of the city I’ve received complaints on,” Councilman Tony Vazquez said. “We have to look at it (from) a holistic point of view and not in a vacuum.”

In opposing Olsen’s idea, Vazquez got into a heated exchange with Olsen’s lone supporter, Councilman Ken Genser, who suggested that his colleagues were underestimating problems in Palisades Park--problems, he said, that they would see firsthand if they would go to the park at 2 a.m., as he has done.

“You might want to go to Cloverfield, right next to the freeway,” Vazquez responded, another area where drug dealing takes place.

Councilwoman Asha Greenberg objected to Olsen’s plan because it impinged on the chief’s prerogative to deploy his forces as he sees fit. Butts, she said, is far better-equipped to make that decision than politicians.

“We have an outstanding police chief, and we have tied his hands in many ways,” Greenberg said.

Olsen responded that he was “dumbfounded” that his colleagues would not immediately assign patrol officers to the park, which he called “the jewel of the city,” and pay them overtime.

He noted that the park is due to reopen in early summer after a $1.5-million renovation, an ideal time to get a handle on problems that he said also include antisocial activities by a large homeless contingent.

In the last two years, 1,000 drug arrests have been made in the park during sting operations. But the dealers return after the undercover operations--financed by overtime pay--are over.

Olsen said that if the council didn’t act favorably on his proposal “our credibility . . . goes straight out the window. . . . Taking control of the park again is the responsibility of this council.”

After the vote, police union President Steve Brackett said he was disappointed. He said Olsen’s proposal would have forced the council to come to grips with what it takes to provide for increased public safety--a willingness to spend more money on policing.

During the council’s discussion of the issue, a suspected Palisades Park drug dealer led police on a high-speed freeway chase. Brackett said Raoul (Cuba) Perez, 25, was arrested after he rammed into a car. The police sirens could be heard in the Council Chambers.

“He is a known dealer of drugs in the park,” Brackett said.