Park Patrol : Crime: Council OKs test program to allocate more officers to fight drug dealing and related crime in downtown areas.

The Santa Monica City Council approved a six-month pilot program Tuesday that will add the equivalent of seven full-time police officers to Palisades Park, the Third Street Promenade and other parts of downtown to combat drug dealing and related crime.

The program--which will cost $575,700, nearly all of it for salaries--will be staffed by regular police officers working overtime.

It was approved on a 5-2 vote, representing a victory for City Councilman Kelly Olsen, who has hammered away at the problem of drug dealing in Palisades Park.

The problem has not abated despite repeated police sting operations at the park. At Tuesday’s council meeting, Olsen said that in December he saw Palisades Park dealers openly peddling drugs to people who had driven by to see the Nativity scenes.

“This got my blood boiling,” Olsen said.

Olsen had originally proposed foot patrols in the park, an option that was rejected by the rest of the council a month ago. Instead, they asked the police chief to devise his own plan. It was that blueprint--a combination of foot and bike patrols--that won the council’s approval Tuesday.

“We have some cancer in the city and the cancer must be dealt with,” Councilman Paul Rosenstein said.

Mayor Judy Abdo and Mayor Pro Tem Tony Vazquez dissented because they said they were not convinced the extra officers were needed. Although Police Chief James T. Butts argued otherwise, they also worried that the new deployment would take police from other neighborhoods, where, they said, crime will now go up.

“For people who are afraid (crime) is going to move to their neighborhood, this is not comforting,” Abdo said.

In addition to approving the pilot program for downtown--the area between Pico and Wilshire boulevards, the ocean and 4th Street--the council also acted to quell public safety concerns about the Third Street Promenade.

At the request of the Bayside District Corp., which runs the successful entertainment area, the council appropriated $146,000 to place a police community service officer in a kiosk in the middle of the promenade.

The council, however, rejected a plan to hire “hosts” who would walk the promenade and advise visitors that they don’t have to give money to panhandlers. Although Bayside officials presented the idea as an education program, some council members objected, saying the city shouldn’t have to pay for what amounted to a private security force.

At a hearing last week, promenade officials and merchants made a strong case for more police protection--which was a surprise because they are usually circumspect about voicing public safety concerns for fear of scaring customers away.

“You have a serious problem in your downtown,” Bayside District President Robert Resnick said. “People don’t feel safe. . . . We have merchants who can’t open their stores in the morning because they’re being cornered.”

Merchants and officials warned the council that they were jeopardizing a cash cow that provides $8 million a year in tax revenues to the city. They offered a packet of letters filled with horror stories.

A letter from the public relations firm of Casey & Sayre said that half of its 14 employees have had their cars stolen or broken into in the year they have had offices on the promenade.

Butts said crime at the promenade--especially car thefts and break-ins--is related to the drug problem in the park. So is some of the aggressive panhandling. In both cases, drug users are committing crimes to raise money to buy crack cocaine--the drug of choice at Palisades Park.

The chief said the pilot program will actually increase protection in other areas of the city because officers assigned there will no longer be pulled downtown whenever extra police are needed.

Butts also asked for new or amended laws to regulate use of the beach parking lots and promenade parking structures. Merchants reported that their employees come to work and find transients sleeping in the elevators and stairwells of the structures.

But City Atty. Marsha Jones Moutrie said the request was tricky because anti-loitering laws are unconstitutional. Some council members also expressed reservations.