Williams Warns Against Using Police Funds to Balance Budget

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has warned top officials that a proposal floated last month to use $6 million in police overtime funds to help balance the city budget could hurt efforts to expand the police force.

“I am opposed to any reductions in sworn overtime funding,” Williams wrote to City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who chairs the council’s Budget and Finance Committee.

In his letter, the chief says that using $6 million of the $52.6 million allocated for overtime this year would “erode the ability to deploy vital crime-suppression activities” through special details, decrease the number of officers on the street and “eliminate the only available source of funding” to offset a projected deficit in the account that pays officers’ salaries.

But Alatorre and a spokeswoman for Mayor Richard Riordan said that a looming general fund deficit of $50 million means the police overtime funds must remain on the table, particularly if the overtime money is not being used for its original intent.

Riordan Press Secretary Noelia Rodriguez emphasized that the proposal from the City Administrative Office is simply to withhold the $6 million in overtime until the last period of the fiscal year. By then, she said, the budget crisis might be solved by other means, or the Police Department may not need the overtime funds.