Alatorre Urges New Ways to Deploy Police

While Mayor Richard Riordan hustled for dollars in Washington on Tuesday to pay for his ambitious plan to add officers to the Los Angeles Police Department, Councilman Richard Alatorre called for new ways to deploy any additional officers hired.

Alatorre complained that the Police Department’s deployment formula--an often controversial instrument for determining where about 80% of the department’s sworn personnel should be stationed--is inadequate.

A new formula, reflecting a stronger emphasis on violent crime, should be used to determine where additional officers hired under Riordan’s Project Safety Los Angeles plan are based, Alatorre said. “There’s not enough weight on violent crime,” he said.

But two members of the council’s Public Safety Committee, which oversees police matters, reacted unfavorably to Alatorre’s views.

“It’s inappropriate for the council to be involved in micromanaging the department,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, the committee’s chairman. “It’s a professional judgment that should be in the hands of the chief (of police). I have no reason to think that the formula’s not fair and reasonable now.”

Councilwoman Laura Chick said it is “very, very important that the deployment formula not become politicized.” Chick added that the current formula seems to give sufficient weight to violent crime. For example, she said, the elite Metro Division seldom works in San Fernando Valley neighborhoods that have lower violent crime rates.

“This kind of debate can be very political and divisive,” Chick said. “There isn’t a neighborhood in the city that believes they have enough police and don’t want more.”

The formula was the subject of intense scrutiny and controversy in the mid-1980s when South-Central Los Angeles community leaders complained that their neighborhoods were not getting their fair share of police protection. That controversy prompted a lengthy study concluding that police generally took about 10% longer to respond to incidents in South-Central than to calls in the Valley.

Consequently, the department undertook a program to equalize response times.

Alatorre’s Eastside-based 14th District includes some of the city’s highest crime areas. In 1994, the LAPD’s Hollenbeck Division in that district reported 69 homicides, giving it the fourth-highest murder rate of the city’s 18 police divisions.

By contrast, the Pacific Division serving Braude’s heavily Westside-based district, and the West Valley Division, which largely serves Chick’s district, reported 25 and 11 homicides, respectively, last year.

Alatorre said he had not yet discussed his proposals for changing the formula with council members, Riordan or LAPD brass.

Cmdr. Tim McBride, chief spokesman for the department, said the “chief of police is receptive to listening to council recommendations for improving the formula. The chief’s job and that of the commission is to fairly distribute our police resources.”

Riordan has made beefing up the department through his Project Safety plan a linchpin of his Administration, noting that Los Angeles has one of the lowest police per capita rates of any major urban area in the United States. The department has about 7,800 officers, and Riordan’s plan calls for 10,000 officers on the streets by mid-1998.

On Tuesday, Alatorre echoed criticism of the current police allocation system that he had first mentioned last week when he announced he was running for reelection.

“I want to ensure that the areas of the city most affected by violent crime receive a greater share of police protection and crime prevention resources,” Alatorre said in his reelection-bid statement.

“I will work to see that new officers, new technology and the most up-to-date and effective policing procedures are deployed proportionately based on violent crime and not politics,” he said.

Alatorre hopes to use his position as chairman of the powerful Budget and Finance Committee to revise the formula, spokesman Bud Sales said.

Chick said deployment discussion should be guided by the Public Safety Committee: “This is not the purview of the budget committee.”