Law Enforcement Officers Oppose Initiative on Crime

Local law enforcement leaders joined San Francisco Bay Area researchers Thursday in denouncing Proposition 21, the juvenile crime initiative on the March 7 statewide ballot, saying the measure would be costly and useless in preventing crime.

Backed by former Gov. Pete Wilson and Gov. Gray Davis, the initiative could require more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults and held in adult prisons and jails.

Standing in front of the Los Angeles Police Department’s downtown headquarters, an LAPD commander, a juvenile court judge and the head of the probation officers union attacked the initiative. They also endorsed a report released at the event by the Oakland-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency and by Commonweal, a Marin County research group. The study contends that Proposition 21 would cost billions to implement but would not improve public safety.

Barry Krisberg, president of the delinquency council, said the news conference was called to show that “criminal justice professionals are not supporting this, not only fuzzy-headed youth advocates.”

“Proposition 21 is a bad law that goes way too far,” said LAPD Cmdr. Dan Koenig, formerly the department’s gang coordinator and a founder of the D.A.R.E. youth program to prevent drug abuse. Koenig said the measure would not affect gang crime, because Los Angeles gang members are, on average, 23 years old.

The measure would give prosecutors the power to decide whether juveniles charged with the most serious crimes should be tried as adults. Such authority now rests with judges.

Koenig also criticized a portion of the measure that would require the registration of gang members. He said that police officers already are aware of active gang members in their areas and that carrying out the registration mandate would take officers away from street patrols.

Passage of Proposition 21 would require the building of state and local jails, prisons and juvenile detention halls costing more than $1 billion, according to the state’s independent legislative analyst. That office estimates the annual cost of the measure would be more than $330 million.

The report from Commonweal and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency puts the cost much higher: more than $1.3 billion for construction and $600 million in annual expenses. Krisberg said his study estimated additional detention costs for local governments to be higher than the state projections.

Whatever the cost, Los Angeles Juvenile Dependency Court Judge Michael Nash said, passage of Proposition 21 would waste money.

“We would be much better off investing the hundreds of millions of dollars on improving education,” he said.

Nash also warned that the measure would “sacrifice fairness for expedience” by giving prosecutors the prerogative.

Supporters of the initiative, including groups representing the state’s sheriffs and district attorneys, contend that the severity of juvenile crime has outgrown laws devised before the 1980s rise in violence among young men. Violent crimes by juveniles are likely to escalate with the growing population of teenagers in coming decades, they argue.

“The kinds of crimes we saw in the ‘50s and ‘60s are not anything like what we’re seeing today,” said Riverside Dist. Atty. Grover Trask. Trask also is president of the California District Attorneys Assn., which backs the initiative.

Trask called the cost projections by the state “pretty much speculation,” and argued that the benefits to crime victims are not figured into those estimates.

Opponents argue that juvenile arrests have dropped in recent years, and that, in Los Angeles County, judges side with prosecutors seeking adult trials for juveniles in about 80% of cases. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and City Council have voted to oppose Proposition 21.