Vote Nears on Merger of Police Agencies

To some, it is a simple way to swell the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department while boosting the public safety of the city’s bus and train riders.

To others, it is a risky proposition that could cost city taxpayers millions and add an unnecessary headache to an LAPD in the midst of the largest expansion in its history and already struggling to adopt a smorgasbord of reforms.

This week, the City Council will vote for the first time on a proposal, debated for years, to merge the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police with the LAPD and the county Sheriff’s Department. Mayor Richard J. Riordan, LAPD officials and the department’s police officers’ union all back the merger, but the three lawmakers who make up the council’s Public Safety Committee--Laura Chick, Mike Feuer and Nate Holden--are urging their colleagues to reject the idea, at least for now.

“From a theoretical standpoint, there is a lot to commend the idea. It’s a question of timing, a question of priorities,” Feuer said in explaining his opposition. “It’s a span of control issue: How many things can one supervise effectively at the same time? This would add another priority and further dissipate the energy of the leaders of the department.”

Chick, the committee chairwoman, said she wants the full council to make a policy decision on the concept of “one city, one department”--which would involve the LAPD taking over law enforcement operations at the airport and harbor as well as in city schools, parks and public housing projects--before cutting a deal with the MTA.

“Why would we make an enormous decision that’s a departure from the way we’ve always handled things without fitting it into the larger picture?” Chick asked in a recent interview. “I think public safety and transit safety could be improved if LAPD took on that jurisdiction. But how they take it on is an essential question.”

The MTA board has already approved the merger. The Sheriff’s Department stands poised to scoop up the whole MTA policing contract if the council rejects it, which would leave the LAPD still having to deal with another agency’s cops patrolling buses in its jurisdiction.

“No plan is perfect, and there are going to be some . . . problems, but they’re really minor problems when you consider the overall plan,” Riordan said in an interview last week. “Essentially, this is a win-win-win situation for everybody.”

According to the plan, the LAPD would get about 200 new officers by absorbing nearly two-thirds of the MTA’s ranks, taking over transit safety operations within the city boundaries; the Sheriff’s Department would get about 100 new cops who would patrol buses and trains in the rest of the county. The officers would make lateral transfers, adopting parallel ranks at the LAPD, though they would ultimately get a boost in pay and benefits because the city offers higher salaries than the MTA.

MTA officers would undergo eight weeks of training required of all law enforcement personnel making lateral transfers to the LAPD, and would remain assigned to transit duties for at least two years, then be allowed to apply for any city assignment. Higher-ranking officers would also receive the required lateral-transfer training and would have an LAPD mentor of similar rank for the first two years.

“It’s a good idea for the MTA because we can take advantage of the LAPD and the sheriff’s expertise in law enforcement,” said MTA Deputy CEO Linda Bohlinger. “They’ve been in law enforcement a lot longer than we have. They have the staff, the resources and the training. Our business is transportation; policing is not our core business.”

The council’s unenthusiastic reaction so far to the proposed merger has frustrated some top LAPD officials, who are lobbying hard to win support for the idea even as council members have lined up against it.

“We still support the concept,” LAPD Assistant Chief Bayan Lewis said last week. “It really is a service issue for us--one level of service for the whole city.”

Still, some specifics of the merger proposal have drawn mixed reviews inside the LAPD, as well as with council members. Among the sticking points:

* Although merger backers insist the plan is cost-neutral, some fear that the deficit-plagued city will find itself a few years down the road facing escalating expenses for transit police and that the MTA will be unwilling to cough up more cash than it promised under the contract.

* LAPD officers are subject to more thorough background checks than their MTA counterparts, and some say there are members of the transit force who do not qualify to wear the city badge. A few MTA officers are former LAPD members who were forced to leave after running into disciplinary problems; in addition, the MTA has wrestled with allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination, issues that already dog the LAPD.

* In absorbing the MTA force, the city would take a liability risk, adopting the current and future legal problems of officers it never individually chose to hire.

* The future of MTA Police Chief Sharon Papa. If she transfers as an LAPD deputy chief or commander, Papa would leapfrog many department veterans and become the highest-ranking woman on the nation’s third-largest police force. That idea rankles female LAPD officers who have struggled to climb the career ladder, as well as many male officers in the upper ranks who have more years of experience than Papa.

“That seems to be exact reverse discrimination. My gender should have nothing to do with what rank I come across as,” Papa said. “There’s no sense fighting over that at this point when we don’t have the approval yet. Either this is a good thing to do or not--let’s not get hung up over me.”

Outside the Public Safety Committee, council members seem split on the issue.

“Having one police force, a more effective police force, far outweighs any cost differential,” said Councilman Marvin Braude, a former Public Safety chairman.

“There’s always a struggle when you’re trying to merge different agencies with law enforcement. Of course there are going to be bumps in the road, of course there are going to be hiccups in the process,” acknowledged Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who plans to vote for the merger. “But if it increases the safety of our transit-dependent constituents, isn’t that what we all want?”

Jackie Goldberg, who heads the council’s Personnel Committee, said she has no problems with the concept of merging the departments, but is frustrated by her inability to get “the hard, cold facts” about the deal on the table.

“The logic that I’m having trouble with is they [the MTA] will save money, and it will cost us nothing. I have trouble reconciling those two,” she said. “If we can reconcile that, I’m a ‘yes’ vote, because the rest, while difficult, is not insurmountable.”

Bohlinger said she is confident that “a lot of the issues can be worked out,” a feeling echoed by Riordan’s staff and the LAPD command staff. The question is whether the details can be hammered through in time.

Chick’s committee report asks the council to order the LAPD to discontinue its negotiations with the MTA, and to bring back a broader proposal on the “one city, one department” concept. Lewis, though, said department leaders are already drafting that analysis, and are hoping to have it ready for Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting.

He would prefer the council postpone a vote on the merger and then deal with the broader policy discussion and the specific MTA contract at the same time, giving merger backers a bit longer to lobby skeptics.

“The bottom line is, it’s going to cost us more than they’re willing to pay us,” Holden said. “It’s just not right. They’re going to generate more internal problems than they can deal with.”