Mayor Unveils Plan Designed to Reverse Rising Crime Trend

Worried that crime rates in the city are taking a turn for the worse, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan unveiled a $14-million anti-crime program Monday to clean up dozens of gang-plagued parks, provide job training for teenagers and deploy more police into problem neighborhoods.

Riordan said the initiative focuses equally on such preventive measures as improving access to jobs and recreational facilities for youngsters, and such crime suppression strategies as adding police in troubled areas. It has the support of the majority of the City Council, many of whom attended Riordan’s news conference in Koreatown to announce the plan.

“We cannot rest on our laurels,” Riordan said, as a dozen children sat in front of his podium and held a large poster in support. “We must stop this trend. We must stop it now.”

For nearly seven years, crime rates in Los Angeles have dropped steadily--decreasing 44% between 1993 and 1999. But as of Aug. 21, violent crime was up nearly 9% this year compared with the same period last year. In the most dramatic increase, gang-related homicides are up 116%.

Hoping the increase won’t lead to a long-term crime wave, Riordan said he has been working for six weeks to put together what he called the “Operation Healthy Neighborhoods” program. Still, neither Riordan nor Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks could explain why crime has jumped in the last six months.

“It could be a blip. That happens,” Riordan said after the news conference. “I don’t know that answer.”

Parks, whose granddaughter was killed in a gang-related shooting in April, said he doesn’t believe there is one particular cause for the increase, but “a lot of random things.”

The mayor’s proposals rely heavily on his favorite crime reduction theory that tackling neighborhood deterioration prevents crime.

The funding for the program is expected to come from the city’s general fund, which needs council approval. Councilman Mike Feuer, who heads the council’s budget committee, said he foresees no opposition to such an appropriation.

“How can we afford not to do this?” Feuer said.

Some critics, however, say the program merely repackages a number of efforts already under way in the city.

The program will target the 10 police divisions where 87% of the city’s homicides and 70% of all violent crimes have taken place. Most of the divisions are in the south and central areas of the city--primarily the poorest neighborhoods in the region.

Under the program, city work crews will eliminate signs of urban decay by hauling away trash on streets, removing graffiti, demolishing abandoned buildings, closing problem alleys and trimming trees.

In addition, the recreation department will form a “strike team” to clean up 36 parks in the 10 problem areas by replacing aging equipment, improving lighting, and trimming overgrown trees and shrubbery. The idea is to bring families back into the parks and thus force gangs out, Riordan said.

Youth programs will also be expanded.

For example, a midnight basketball program that has operated in South Los Angeles will be expanded to parks in East Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, officials said.

Most of the $14 million, which must be approved by the council, will be spent over the next six months on extra recreation staff and new play equipment at the city parks.

About a third of the funds will pay for overtime and extra staffing costs for the neighborhood cleanup crews.

Adding to the plan will be a $44-million grant awarded to the city by the Department of Labor in February to provide job training for up to 9,000 youngsters, mostly in Boyle Heights and Watts.

That money will be provided over a five-year period.

In direct crime suppression, police from specialized citywide units will be assigned to target violent crimes, such as homicides, rape, robbery and assaults in the Police Department’s south and central bureaus. Police in those areas will be redeployed so that the largest shift will be working during the most crime-prone times--between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. Thursday through Sunday.

Parks also announced that Cmdr. Tom Lorenzen, who oversaw the department’s much-touted convention planning unit, will be assigned to oversee police operations during those crime-prone periods.

Under the program, police will also crack down on teens who are truant and in violation of curfew laws.

Councilman Nick Pacheco, a former prosecutor who grew up in Boyle Heights and now represents most of East Los Angeles, praised the effort to improve neighborhood parks.

“I know that the parks were an important part of keeping me on the straight and narrow,” he said.

But noticeably absent from the news conference were two of Riordan’s toughest critics, City Council members Laura Chick and Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Chick said the mayor’s office invited her only an hour before the news conference, too late for her to reschedule other meetings she had planned for the morning.

Although they were both invited, Chick and Ridley-Thomas said they had not been briefed on the contents of the mayor’s program before the news conference. Ridley-Thomas said that was part of the reason, along with scheduling problems, he did not attend.

When a reporter explained the program to Chick, she noted that the city has already launched a “Safe Parks” program that increases police patrols in the 71 most crime-plagued parks in the city.

“It has been my impression that all of these things have been in place for a while,” she said. Still, Chick said she supports any effort to improve safety at parks and other public areas.

“I think this is ongoing normal protocol, and I support it,” she added.

Ridley-Thomas said he supports Riordan’s program but noted that it was the council that launched the Safe Parks program two years ago. “It looks like the mayor finally got religion,” he said.

A Riordan spokeswoman defended the program, saying it spends additional money in the parks and the recreation programs that would not have otherwise been spent.

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Violent Crimes in L.A.

Violent crimes in Los Angeles have increased nearly 9% this year and homicides are 24% higher compared with the same period last year. Gang-related homicides in the city are up 116% over the same period last year.

Note: Dates for latest figures vary because of the method the LAPD uses to compile data.

Source: LAPD