SECOND OPINIONS : Crime Won’t Wait for Sixth Police Division : General Motors’ donation of five acres of land is a major victory for getting officers the resources they need. We must continue to seek creative ways of financing construction.

Proposition 1, the police facilities bond measure, was a clear affirmation by the voters that public safety continues to be priority No. 1, and that this priority needs to be coupled with a commitment to giving police officers the resources and facilities they need to get their job done.

The bond measure received a 63% approval from the voters--a landslide in any other election. Because a two-thirds vote is required to pass a bond measure, Prop. 1 missed passage by a mere three percentage points. The message was not lost. Sixty-three percent of Los Angeles voters told us they wanted better police protection and better police response time, and they were willing to allocate the resources to provide them.

In light of our troubled economic times and the broken promise to build a police station in the Valley after the 1989 bond issue, I find it hard to characterize the tremendous groundswell of support that this year’s bond measure received and the 63% approval of Prop. 1 as anything other than a great success. It was a valiant effort marked by great accomplishments.

In four short months, the proponents of the bond measure succeeded in mounting a campaign that increased the citywide awareness of the extremely overcrowded conditions that hamper our police force’s ability to do their job.

In the City Council, we established a special Ad-Hoc Committee on Expediting Police Facilities. As the chair of this committee, I helped develop strategies that will shave years of delay in the building of any police facility in the future. In fact, these strategies will have a lasting impact on how Los Angeles builds any new public facility.

There won’t be any new monies generated from a bond measure. However, the committee will continue to explore creative methods for financing the construction of new police facilities.

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In the most noteworthy of our victories, General Motors Corp. announced the donation of five acres of land from its vacant Van Nuys car assembly facility for the headquarters of the sixth police division in the Valley. This gift will save us $5 million to $10 million in land costs. It was a major victory for the Police Department and for the San Fernando Valley. It represents one of the most significant public safety investments in our city’s history.

Through these efforts, we are showing the will exists in City Hall and Parker Center to cut through the red tape and look at innovative ways of getting new stations and substation built, cheaper and easier than in the past. But the facility shortage problems that plague our police force will not go away unless we continue to take bold action.

I set out in the fall of 1994 to create a sixth police division in the San Fernando Valley, and I am committed to exhausting every option for doing it. The Valley needs the sixth police division because crime will not wait for its construction. I am willing to step up to the plate again and support any action that will improve our Police Department.

Our police force is counting on us. We can’t let them down.