Mayor to Unveil Proposals to Improve Police Force

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan this week will unveil a proposal to add $57 million to the Police Department’s budget, including $3 million for the embattled crime lab, a top aide said.

In addition, the mayor plans to bring up proposals to improve neighborhoods.

These and other matters were scheduled to be included in Riordan’s state of the city speech today and his 1996-97 budget proposal, to be released Friday.

This year’s state of the city speech--to be delivered at 9 a.m. on the steps of City Hall--will include several community leaders to attest to a “new wave of optimism” about the city, said Michael Keeley, Riordan’s chief operating officer and top fiscal advisor.

Today’s annual speech--Riordan’s third since taking office July 1, 1993--will closely foreshadow his coming budget proposals Friday.

One of the initiatives Riordan is to discuss today include is joining with the New York-based Local Initiative Support Corp. to stage a Los Angeles Neighborhoods Convention so that leaders of different communities can pool ideas and resources.

He also will propose expanding the city’s pioneering, federally backed Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, which provides seed money to help community leaders start improvement projects along heavily traveled streets.

Keeley also selectively revealed details of the mayor’s budget proposals for the coming fiscal year. Among them are “record expenditures” for both major public safety departments: police and fire. Riordan critics in the Fire Department complain that he has showered city resources on the LAPD while ignoring their department.

Keeley would not discuss any details of the mayor’s proposals for the Fire Department but divulged several particulars of Riordan’s thinking about the Police Department, including the addition of $57 million to the LAPD budget.

Keeley would not indicate where the city will find the additional money, except to say that the additions can be accommodated--and a projected deficit of up to $240 million covered--without increasing taxes or slicing other important city services, such as libraries and parks.

About half the new police money is aimed at adding more officers to the force, Keeley said. Plans are to hire 1,170 recruits, which, taking attrition into account, should net 710 additional officers by the time Riordan is up for reelection next spring. That amount, when added to the approximately 8,700 officers on the force now, would put the mayor within 600 officers of fulfilling his campaign pledge to add 3,000 to the department or not seek reelection.

The other half would be spent on such things as more training officers and trouble-shooters for the department’s new computer system. The mayor will propose adding $3 million to improve the department’s crime lab, which was thrown into unflattering focus during the O.J. Simpson murder trial last year. Riordan also wants three additional people to help straighten out snags in the $16-million, privately funded computer system and 12 more to staff a 24-hour “help desk,” and will propose continued spending to improve the city’s overburdened 911 emergency communications system, Keeley said.