Crime Bill’s Defeat a Blow to Local Police : Budgets: Many agencies were anticipating an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars over the next six years from Clinton’s legislation.

In defeating President Clinton’s crime bill, Congress added another quick and painful thump to cash-strapped local governments, and officials said they were surprised and angered by the turn of events.

The legislation would have provided hundreds of millions of dollars--perhaps as much as several billion dollars--over the next six years to state and local governments seeking to stem the tide of crime.

Although no agency had factored crime bill money into its current budget, many were looking forward to an infusion of funds next year. Police, courts and jails would have been the primary beneficiaries of the bill’s myriad provisions and programs. But agencies as varied as school districts, battered women’s shelters, sports leagues for at-risk youths, and Boys and Girls Clubs would also have received new funding under the bill’s crime prevention programs.

The bill included funding for an estimated 240 additional police officers in Orange County, plus the chance for various crime prevention programs to apply for grants.

A disappointed Garden Grove Police Chief Stanley L. Knee said Friday that his city could have gained funding for 15 to 20 new officers, all of whom would have been put directly on the streets.

“Literally, you would have seen more officers on the street and a decrease in response time to priority crime,” Knee said.

Even in cities that were not expected to receive new officers from the crime bill, reaction was one of disappointment and frustration.

“We’re kind of being held hostage by the political process,” said Huntington Beach Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg, who expected his city might have received extra money for officer training. “We need to get those resources on the streets, and we need the federal government to give us the resources necessary to police the streets.”

La Habra Police Chief Steven Staveley said his department wasn’t expecting any new officers from the crime bill, but he too was upset by the outcome.

“I think it’s unconscionable for the Congress to play politics when people are suffering in the communities,” Staveley said. “It’s another aggravation is what it is. . . . Those guys need to get their act together and do the right thing.”

Orange County Superior and Municipal court officials had also been eyeing the crime bill for a potential grant to help set up a courtroom that would deal exclusively with narcotic cases, otherwise known as a drug court. A key goal of the drug court program is to save money by preventing repeat narcotic offenses.

Orange County Superior Court Presiding Judge James L. Smith said he’s not sure what affect the lack of crime bill funds would have on the plan, but he said the bill’s defeat won’t help.

“This is just one alternative that would have been available to us that is not now available to us,” Smith said.

The Los Angeles Police Department figured it was entitled to about $50 million from the bill to add hundreds of officers to the force, fund more overtime pay for officers and pay for new police equipment.

“This is a slap in the face to everything we have tried to do to turn this city around,” Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon said.

Other big losers include the state Department of Corrections.

Tip Kindel, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said that over the next six years California would have received about $1 billion to help pay for its prison construction program.

The measure also would have provided an additional $700 million over the next six years to house state prisoners who are illegal immigrants. Further, the bill would have authorized the hiring of 4,000 new Border Patrol agents over six years, some of whom would have been stationed along the California-Mexico border, said Paul Kranhold, a spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson.

But some Washington watchers cautioned that much of the money that so many in California had been counting on may have been illusory from the start.

Mark Tajima, a federal legislation analyst with the Los Angeles County chief administrative office, said that authorizing $33.2 billion in crime funds is one thing. But getting Congress to allocate the money is quite another.

For instance, a law passed by Congress in 1986 authorized federal funds to help pay the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants who committed felonies, an issue of tremendous import to California. But Congress has yet to appropriate funds for that program, Tajima said, and it is unclear what level of funding would ever have been available under the Clinton crime package.

And cumbersome rules and regulations may have kept many local agencies from ever receiving any funds, Tajima said.

One of the bill’s major provisions, the $8.9-billion community policing program, requires local agencies to match federal funds on a minimum 75% federal to 25% local split. Communities that are willing to increase their share of the cost above 25% would be first in line to receive the funds.

Tajima and others also noted that even if the funds were appropriated, the federal government would have to write new regulations, field applications, review the requests and then disburse the funds. That process, at best, could run well into next summer.

Santa Ana police officials estimated their department could have qualified for 80 new officers, but the funding requirements were troubling, Sgt. Bob Clark said.

“All in all, it’s a tremendous project and undertaking,” he said. “Certainly, it would be advantageous to a city such as Santa Ana, but I just don’t know about the total monies we’d have to expend to obtain those 80 officers. There are still a lot of questions unanswered and uncertainties we face. We’ll have to watch and see what happens the next time around.”

In any case, local youth organizations said they were eager to compete for some of the federal money.

“You can’t just get tough on crime once it occurs . . . you have to prevent crime,” said Danny Hernandez, executive director of the Hollenbeck Youth Center and founder of the Inner City Games. “We felt that we were going to get some of that money because groups like ours are in the trenches every day.”

Times staff writers Mark Gladstone, Bill Stall and Anna Cekola contributed to this report.