Spousal Abuse Prosecution Unit to Be Expanded : Law: The same staff members who file charges will now be able to see cases through to resolution, city attorney says, increasing the likelihood of convictions. He names a top deputy to head the effort.

A highly regarded veteran of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office will head a major expansion of the domestic violence prosecution program, City Atty. James K. Hahn said Thursday.

Deputy City Atty. Lara J. Bloomquist, 45, will lead a 20-person team of prosecutors, victims’ advocates, investigators and hearing officers in what Hahn said will be the largest domestic violence prosecution effort in the nation.

The expansion comes in the wake of heightened awareness of the difficulty in combatting domestic violence--and especially the successful prosecution of its perpetrators--in the aftermath of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Although Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman, highly publicized reports of his beatings of Nicole Simpson were accompanied by a dramatic increase in domestic violence complaints shortly after the June, 1994, murders, police reported.

The city and county governments both formed task forces to grapple with the problem, and Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas won approval for his plan to spend $5 million to expand shelters for victims of spousal abuse.

During budget deliberations last spring, the City Council voted 14 to 0 to authorize the $1.4-million expansion of the city attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit, which was the first in the nation when it was founded in 1978.

The expansion will enable the office to take a team approach--known as vertical prosecution--so the same people will be handling a case from the filing of charges through the resolution.

“What that allows us to do is establish a bond very early with the victims, who are often frightened and unwilling” to testify against their partners, said Maureen Siegel, chief of the city attorney’s criminal law branch. With the team approach, the office expects to dramatically lower the rate of cases dismissed because the key witnesses--the victims--become reluctant, Siegel said.

Siegel said the city attorney’s office had been seeking funds to establish a vertical prosecution team for eight years but did not succeed until this year’s budget sessions, when Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg persuaded her colleagues to add the money to the budget as proposed by Mayor Richard Riordan.

Riordan, in a June 1 letter to the City Council, said he would not veto any of the council’s additions to the $3.9-billion spending package, but he listed several areas he felt warranted “further discussion and debate” and indicated he would consider holding up expenditures for some of them. Among them was the domestic violence unit, which Riordan said he strongly supports. But he added that he wanted to phase in the additions while getting some additional information, including case workload standards, current statistics and Police Department approaches.

Siegel said several members of the new team are being hired right away, with plans to add others later in the fiscal year.

Several council members hailed the program.

“We are long overdue in getting this program properly staffed and up and running,” Ridley-Thomas said. Combatting domestic violence “is not solely the job of the Police Department. We have to have sufficient resources for effective prosecutions as well,” he added.

Goldberg said the expansion will not in itself stop domestic violence but “it’s an important piece of the puzzle.”

“We’re looking to make it unacceptable to beat up your spouse,” Goldberg said, “so the fact that this unit is beginning is very good.”

Councilman Marvin Braude, whose wife, psychiatrist Marjorie Braude, heads the city’s Domestic Violence Task Force, said he is “very delighted” that the program is starting. Braude said the unit will complement other efforts in the city, including the Police Department’s second annual domestic violence conference, scheduled for Oct. 30 at the new Police Academy in Westchester.

Bloomquist, a graduate of Whittier College School of Law, joined the city attorney’s office from private practice in August, 1986. Hahn said she has become “one of the agency’s top prosecutors,” with a 95% conviction rate in 141 jury trials.

This year, she became the first recipient of the “Outstanding Woman Prosecutor” award of the League of Women Prosecutors, Hahn added, calling Bloomquist “a tremendously gifted trial attorney.”

She also has been involved in training new prosecutors and in leading training programs for the LAPD and the California District Attorney’s Assn. For five years, she has worked on domestic violence cases for Hahn’s office.