LAPD Can’t Pull Fast One on This Veteran Agitator

State Sen. Tom Hayden has been clubbed, gassed and beaten up at a Democratic national convention. He has been arrested, tried and wrongly convicted of fomenting a riot. So when the California Highway Patrol requests $1 million in convention “security equipment” for the L.A. Police Department, his antenna shoots up.

Exactly what kind of equipment? the L.A. Democrat asks, sitting on a Senate budget subcommittee. Nobody seems to know. He’s merely told, “We ought to do this”--meaning, don’t get too nosy, it’s a request from the top, from Gov. Gray Davis.

Hayden’s not a go-along, get-along guy. So the curious expenditure doesn’t make it into the Senate’s version of Davis’ $100-billion budget proposal. But it does glide into the Assembly’s version and winds up on a conference committee negotiating table, where it’s routinely approved.

Hayden agitates; some habits never change, even at age 60. The former antiwar protester gets his hands on the detailed list of equipment requests for the August convention in L.A. It’s leaked by a law officer who’s “offended,” he says.

The LAPD claims it needs--ostensibly to help the CHP move traffic and protect dignitaries--about $125,000 worth of pepper spray, tear gas and gas guns. This includes, among other gadgets, 40 semiautomatic launchers to fire 20,000 pepper balls, plus 20 40-millimeter gas guns.

There’s also about $60,000 worth of surveillance cameras, $19,000 in bolt cutters, and $263,000 in bomb detection and demolition devices, plus mountain climbing gear.

And a $2,400 paper shredder.

“Some of it looks legitimate,” says Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco), “but other stuff just is kind of silly. You don’t know whether they’re getting ready to be invaded or to invade somebody.”

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Why a fancy paper shredder? Why any of it? The LAPD isn’t talking.

Hayden’s theory is the LAPD didn’t have enough nerve to ask the City Council for pepper spray and a paper shredder, so it’s trying to sneak the purchases through the Legislature.

“Can you imagine at this point in the Rampart crisis showing up on your budget with pepper spray?” the lawmaker asks. “And a paper shredder? For a police force under scrutiny for framing people?”

Clearly, L.A. is trying to spare its own tax money and tap into the state’s. The city is committed to spending $4 million on transportation and perhaps $1 million each day for police overtime. Gov. Davis has requested roughly $4 million in state money--$730,000 for CHP costs, $1 million for LAPD equipment and $2.3 million to pay for police overtime in assisting the CHP.

That’s roughly $12 million in local and state tax dollars on top of $13.2 million the feds are kicking in--for a four-day convention that really should be held over one weekend at much less cost.

Private interests have pumped in another $35 million. And that reminds Hayden of why the LAPD probably wants mountain climbing gear:

“If somebody’s standing on top of the Staples Center holding a banner that names all the big special interest contributors--or says ‘Save the Rain Forest’--they can drag him down.”

And he’s right.

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It’s not exactly clear how that exotic LAPD arsenal request got from Los Angeles to Sacramento and into the state budget.

The official story goes like this: The CHP asked the LAPD for help in keeping freeways open and escorting dignitaries. The LAPD replied, sure--give us overtime money and get us equipment; we’ll return it later.

CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick says he never received an equipment list, but was told $1 million ought to do it.

“We were misled,” says Hayden. “We funded something without knowing what it was.”

Helmick finally got the list after Hayden’s protest. The commissioner discovered that the LAPD’s itemized costs didn’t even add to $1 million; it totaled about $470,000.

He’s knocking out the gas guns, tear gas, pepper spray and mysterious paper shredder. “The whole intent was to help us,” Helmick notes. “Clearly, I don’t expect to use pepper spray.”

The CHP chief says he’ll now return to the Legislature with a reduced request for $340,000 to buy the cameras, bolt cutters (for dislodging chained protesters), bomb detection devices and climbing gear.

Says a Davis aide: “We weren’t trying to hide anything. If the L.A. Police Department is trying to sneak one by, that’s not our fault.”

Only if they manage to get away with it. Because of Hayden, they won’t. He has this thing about painful, potentially fatal pepper spray.

The governor and the Legislature are saved an embarrassment. And state taxpayers are spared a waste of money.