Public Safety Isn’t Shielded From Cutbacks

For the first few months of Orange County’s financial crisis, law enforcement budgets seemed untouchable even as social services were slashed. On Thursday, cops and prosecutors found themselves targets on the firing line, and county supervisors started to backpedal on previous assertions that public safety would be shielded.

Orange County Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy proposed cutting Sheriff Brad Gates’ budget by $4 million and Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi’s budget by $2 million. The Board of Supervisors unanimously consented.

For the two law officers, long among the most popular and powerful political figures in the county, the budget cuts marked a humbling moment. Angry and frustrated, they warned of the most dire consequences--inmates released earlier and fewer criminals prosecuted.

In a county where fear of crime ranked as the No. 1 issue before the bankruptcy, the cuts mark a turning point.

But faced with a need to slice the county operating budget by 45% since the county filed bankruptcy in December, Supervisor Marian Bergeson gave voice to what her board colleagues all seemed to be thinking: the board had little choice.

“In a word, we’re broke and I frankly don’t see a way out at this point,” she told Gates.

Popejoy said the savings are needed for a $19-million “cushion” that would be used only in extreme emergencies as the county tries to extricate itself from bankruptcy.

Gates, usually supremely confident in his demeanor, emerged from the meeting distraught--and seemingly at a loss on how to implement his new marching orders.

“It’s going to mean a lot of negative impact to the public safety of this county,” Gates said. “We absolutely can’t do it and still provide essential public safety services.

Anti-tax forces, though, were skeptical.

Huntington Beach resident Bill Mello, an outspoken critic of county government, said he had little sympathy for the law enforcement agencies when other critical services were also on the chopping block. Accusing Gates of putting on a show for supervisors, he said law enforcement too often is considered a “sacred cow.”

“I heard Brad Gates come in and give his sad story,” said Mello, a key figure in the anti-tax Committees of Correspondence. “That Brad Gates behaves like a sissy, crying, crying, crying. He’s just trying to protect his empire.

“He should take the cuts Popejoy recommended and just get the job done,” Mello said. “I think that’s a very, very selfish group. I like them, they do a very good job but they are very selfish, especially when so many people are being laid off.”

Mello, however, called for sparing street officers and instead laying off clerical workers and others he considers less critical.

For Gates and Capizzi, the cuts mark a sharp political turnabout--even since the county plunged into its current morass. Both sat on a three-man management council formed immediately after the bankruptcy, and they engineered the first $40 million in budget cuts.

The Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office escaped largely unscathed, as county leaders cited the need to safeguard public safety and critics charged that the two were unfairly sparing their own agencies while targeting others--including their courtroom opponents, the public defender’s office.

Amid an early vacuum of managerial leadership in the county, the sheriff seemed to be taking hold of the government’s bureaucratic reins. Meanwhile, Capizzi launched an aggressive investigation of potential wrongdoing by county officials tied to the collapse of the Orange County investment pool.

Even as the budget ax cut more deeply, the two departments escaped with far less damage than areas such as social services.

Still, the budgets for the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney have grown substantially in recent years. Before the bankruptcy, the Sheriff’s Department budget was set to grow by 24%, and now stands at $178.7 million. The district attorney’s budget was set to grow by 30% to $56.6 million.

But law enforcement and public safety are cherished in Orange County, and county officials who earlier openly criticized Gates and Capizzi were reluctant to do so Thursday.

Capizzi told the board his office is already so lean that cuts would end critical services to victims of crimes. Deputies who specialize in handling elder-abuse cases and certain child-abuse cases would no longer have the “luxury” to do so. He said misdemeanor crimes would be prosecuted as infractions and some convicted felons who commit new crimes might be prosecuted as probation only and not for a more serious crime.

Capizzi also said his office might not have the resources to lobby the state parole board to keep convicts behind bars as long as possible.

“We have spread it out just about as much as we can,” Capizzi said about his overall budget. “This is not conducive to a safe community. It frustrates the district attorney’s office and frustrates me as the district attorney to not provide the public with the kind of public safety it deserves.”

Both law enforcement leaders seem likely to use the latest cuts to argue in graphic terms for a half-cent increase in the sales tax, which they previously supported.

On Thursday, Gates showed supervisors a video depicting a jail fight, a bank robbery suspect shooting at officers and the high-tech possibilities of his department’s crime lab. He repeatedly mentioned the highly publicized kidnaping-murder of Newport Beach waitress Denise Huber and said cuts to his department would hinder investigation and prosecution of such cases.

“I don’t want to have to say . . . to the Huber family, ‘I can’t get the job done and you may never know what happened to your daughter,’ ” an angry Gates told the board. “You have a pot of gold in your hands. You have a lot of tough decisions to make. I’m just here to tell you I have to draw the line in the sand on the $4 million.”