Riordan, Hayden at Odds on Visions for Public Safety

As Mayor Richard Riordan seeks a second term in office, he labors under the yoke of a broken promise: In 1993, Riordan one-upped his opponent in the mayor’s race by promising to “hire, train and deploy an additional 3,000 police officers” or decline to seek a second term.

The Los Angeles Police Department at that time was just over 7,600 officers strong; today, the force numbers 9,280, larger than it has ever been but more than 1,000 short of what Riordan pledged.

For state Sen. Tom Hayden, the challenge of promoting his public safety vision is a different one: He is better known for being arrested than for managing police. Once a nationally celebrated criminal defendant--a member of the Chicago 7--Hayden was also one of the more celebrated victims of LAPD spying. The California legislator now is faced with seeking the top office in a city long preoccupied with its police force.

Predictably, he is tackling that campaign with virtually nonexistent support from the members of the LAPD. The one officer he has endorsed, Police Chief Willie L. Williams, has not returned the favor.

The result is two candidates with evident vulnerabilities in the area of police and law enforcement. And yet both men enter the mayor’s race--one whose winner will guide the city into the 21st century--driven by a determined desire to improve safety for the city’s 3.5 million residents. They bring widely divergent ideas to that issue, and though they agree on some things, their views offer voters a clear choice in April.

The differences between Riordan and Hayden are manifold--notwithstanding a few obvious similarities. Both are multimillionaire residents of Brentwood, practically neighbors. They are relatively close in age--Hayden is 57, Riordan 66--and Irish by heritage. Both are thoughtful and well read, borrowing from academic sources and personal experiences to build their views of crime and how to fight it.

But the two men came of age on opposite sides of a deep psychological rift in America, one that expresses itself powerfully in connection with the question of how government can best protect its citizens.

Riordan has spent four years industriously lobbying for more police. He has made significant progress, and today he emphasizes the need to improve police management and accountability, hinting at his displeasure with Williams by contrasting the record in Los Angeles with the staggering progress being made in New York City.

Hayden backs Williams and nods toward increasing the size of the Police Department. But he speaks far more passionately about crime prevention and healing what he sees as a tragically divided city, one in need of care as well as leadership.

The two candidates even have their own competing literature: Riordan’s speeches and campaign material are dotted with references to his friend and UCLA scholar James Q. Wilson; Hayden bad-mouths Wilson’s work and instead borrows heavily from the writing of Dr. James Gilligan of Harvard Medical School.

Wilson is one of the nation’s best-known political theorists and architects of community-based policing.

Gilligan last year wrote a study analyzing the causes of violence that has profoundly influenced Hayden.

“My way of thinking focuses on the department doing a better job based on arrests, based on discouraging quality-of-life crimes,” Riordan said. “Where I think the department has to do a better job, and where I think it is highly deficient, is the lack of power and accountability at the lower levels of the department.”

Hayden does not exactly dispute that, but says the mayor’s emphasis is misplaced and his record flawed.

“Riordan talks about all those things, but he hasn’t done them,” Hayden said. “It’s typical of him to disconnect himself from the things that are his responsibility. It’s his Police Commission. If he wants these things of the Police Department, then get them.”

‘Pledge is Irrelevant’

Since taking office in 1993, Riordan has emphasized growth in the LAPD over virtually all other budget priorities. He has successfully spearheaded the effort to secure millions of dollars in federal grants, and he has steadfastly steered city resources toward the buildup of the city’s police force.

Despite all that, his efforts to build the department have fallen short of the goal he set in 1993. During the mayoral campaign that year, Riordan’s chief opponent was City Councilman Michael Woo, who promised to expand the LAPD by 2,000 officers if elected mayor. Riordan trumped that offer by pledging 3,000, then came up short even of Woo’s goal.

Riordan has tried to shrug off the issue by stating that what he meant was that he would hire 3,000 police officers, not that the department would necessarily expand by that much. In that technical sense, the promise might be fulfilled because the city has hired that many new officers--even though it has lost scores at the same time.

But that argument obscures the meaning of Riordan’s promise, which was to expand the size of the LAPD, not to speed up a revolving door of police officers. Pressed, Riordan dismisses the issue entirely.

“The pledge is irrelevant,” Riordan said in a recent interview. “People play this numbers game. . . . We have done absolutely the best we could, and it’s been very good.”

The pace of expansion has been hampered by an attrition rate higher than police officials originally estimated, in part because the LAPD did not anticipate a rash of retirements that occurred over the last several years.

Nevertheless, under Riordan, the city has expanded its police force as never before. What’s more, the expansion came despite the initial reservations of the city’s police chief, who first balked at the LAPD buildup, then endorsed it and helped push it along.

After initial problems getting new officers into the field, police now are a far more visible force in Los Angeles. New cars and new equipment--much of it secured at Riordan’s insistence--have made the LAPD a bigger and better-outfitted police agency than at any time in its recent history.

Crime, meanwhile, is sharply down over the last four years, but that is true in major cities across the country. Riordan’s campaign manager, Julio Ramirez, cited the decline in crime as evidence of the mayor’s effectiveness, and some officials agree. But Riordan conceded that he cannot be sure why the numbers are down.

“I honestly don’t know,” the mayor said, adding that he hopes more police are making a difference but acknowledging that statistics do not tell the whole story.

Complicating the record still further are the mixed signals about the LAPD’s effectiveness in recent years. Although crime has dropped, so have arrests, field interviews, traffic citations and cleared cases. And though those indicators showed some increases last year after they became a hot political issue, they remain far below the levels of the late 1980s and early ‘90s.

Why is a police department with so many more officers producing so little evidence of increased work? That question both confounds and angers the mayor.

“There is essentially no power and accountability in the sergeants, lieutenants and captains,” Riordan said. “The rules and regulations come down from the command staff up above. There’s no flexibility in them, so in effect there’s no empowerment.”

The remedy, in Riordan’s view, already is being practiced in the nation’s largest police department, the New York Police Department.

There, precinct commanders are hauled before top brass once a month and forced to defend their crime-fighting efforts on a block-by-block basis. Computerized maps chart each criminal offense in a precinct, and commanders are expected to be able to explain patterns as well as to propose solutions. Failing to suggest an idea is considered unacceptable. Dozens of top brass have been transferred or demoted.

Over the last five years, New York has seen a historic drop in crime unparalleled anywhere in the nation. Today, reported crime in New York is at its lowest level in a generation.

The LAPD has no such system for rapidly collecting street-level information on crime and sharing it with top department officials, nor does it traditionally take stern measures against station commanders who fail to come up with innovative ways of battling crime in their areas. Transfers and demotions of top brass are almost unheard of in Los Angeles.

Riordan, who visited the NYPD to study its methods, yearns for the kind of results that city has witnessed.

“They have a highly sophisticated system of accountability,” the mayor said. “We should have that in Los Angeles.”

‘You Have to Rebuild’

While Riordan focuses on improving police accountability, Hayden challenges the mayor on nearly every aspect of his public safety program. The state senator blames Riordan for breaking his promise on expanding the LAPD, accuses him of failing to do anything to implement the New York model, and charges that his approach to public safety is woefully short on prevention.

On New York, Hayden shares some of Riordan’s enthusiasm for that city’s crime crackdown. But Hayden credits New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani with that progress, and pointedly contrasts Guiliani with his Los Angeles counterpart.

“Guiliani is real,” Hayden said. “Guiliani is tough. There’s no comparison. He’s better than Riordan in every respect. . . . I support what Guiliani’s done. Riordan hasn’t done any of that.”

Although Hayden launches his Riordan critique with obvious enthusiasm, his own record on public safety issues is more obscure. In part, that is because his political career has been spent as a legislator, where he has no direct supervision over police.

He has sponsored bills increasing the penalties for domestic violence and for robberies at automated teller machines. He supported three-strikes legislation that would have applied only to violent offenders, but opposed the broader proposal that passed and now has become embroiled in court challenges. He wrote and won passage of a law requiring that victims of violent crime be notified before prosecutors cut court deals with alleged assailants.

But those are a few bills over the course of a long political career, one that stretches from the streets of Chicago to the California Legislature. And the real reason Hayden’s record is not more replete with police legislation is that his approach to public safety is broader, more ethereal. He is determined to arrest criminals, but is more engaged by the idea of preventing crime.

“It is impossible to approach this problem with prevention as an afterthought,” Hayden said.

So as Hayden plows through his recipe for public safety in Los Angeles, it is with barely a mention of the Police Department. Instead, he talks of a drug treatment center in Tarzana, of the international dimensions of gangs and drugs, of the need to address violence as a byproduct of “shame.”

And into that mix he casts himself as a peacemaker--a leader who can reach not only city leaders but gang leaders and former criminals now ready to devote themselves to building their communities.

“I can’t imagine how you would create a more peaceful Los Angeles without working, among other things, with these guys who have made this change in their own lives and are role models in their neighborhoods,” Hayden said. “As the Bible says, you have to rebuild with the stones the builders left out.”

In the long term, Hayden says, public safety can only be built on foundations of economic growth--”we have to build an economy that is more attractive than the drug trade”--and genuine civic commitment. He wants the entertainment industry to train and hire more young people, and he wants President Clinton to spend real time in Los Angeles listening to the stories of young people afflicted by violence.

Although some of Hayden’s specifics are new to this campaign, his underlying ideas--of treatment, prevention, neighborhood empowerment, outreach--have long been mainstays of his approach to government. And while they are true to himself, they also capitalize on one of the few areas where he shows greater political muscle than Riordan.

A recent Times poll showed that although residents thought Riordan would be tougher on crime, Hayden is perceived as the candidate more likely to ease racial tensions. Hayden’s peacemaker approach to criminal justice links public safety to racial and economic harmony. In the process, it takes a political liability and turns it into a strength.

“You need a peace envoy to build a gang truce,” Hayden said. “I have the credibility to do that.”

Still, the Riordan camp, which enjoys a powerful lead in the polls, seems unperturbed by Hayden’s criticism or by his prospects for victory.

“The question that this all really comes down to,” said Ramirez, Riordan’s campaign manager, “is, who do the citizens of Los Angeles trust more with their public safety? Mayor Riordan or Tom Hayden?”

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On the Record

Here is a look at statements by the leading candidates in the mayoral race.

THE RHETORIC

Mayor Richard Riordan: In 1993, Riordan declared: “We must immediately hire, train and deploy an additional 3,000 police officers.”

State Sen. Tom Hayden: Hayden’s campaign literature proclaims that he has “pushed for more community-based policing and putting more violent criminals in prison ever since his election to the Legislature 15 years ago.”

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THE RECORD

Mayor Richard Riordan: At the time Riordan made the promise, the LAPD had roughly 7,600 officers. It dropped to 7,400 by the time Riordan’s police buildup began. As of last week, the department numbered 9,280 police officers.

State Sen. Tom Hayden: Although Hayden has written legislation extending punishment for some criminal offenses, he cited just one bill that he has successfully carried that specifically advanced community policing--legislation that gave the state a permanent role in funding Neighborhood Watch programs. He also campaigned for the 1992 L.A. police reform measure, Charter Amendment F.

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THE RESPONSE

Mayor Richard Riordan: “The pledge is irrelevant,” Riordan said. “People play this numbers game . . . We have done absolutely the best we could, and it’s been very good.”

State Sen. Tom Hayden: “I have been working for community policing in one way or another since the 1970s,” Hayden said. “I’ve long been pushing for some kind or another community-based approach.”