LAPD Could Lose Transit Patrol Job

Transit officials next month will consider stripping a roughly $30-million contract from the Los Angeles Police Department and handing it off to the Sheriff’s Department, which is aggressively pushing to take over policing of trains and buses countywide.

Such a move, to be considered in contract discussions beginning in September, would dramatically increase the presence of sheriff’s deputies throughout Los Angeles while punching a hole in the city’s fragile budget. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s contract for the LAPD’s transit police has added more than $100 million to city coffers since 1997.

For the last five years, after the MTA closed most of its in-house security force, the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have divvied up a roughly $52-million contract to police the transit agency’s vast network.

The Sheriff’s Department transit unit polices county buses and the Green and Blue Line railways. An LAPD division patrols the Red Line subway and city buses. Police are responsible for everything from stopping pickpockets and muggers to checking to see that passengers have paid their fares.

Policing the system is complicated by the fact that buses and trains often course through several cities and jurisdictions. The sheriff-patrolled Blue Line, for example, starts in Long Beach, cuts through Compton and ends up in downtown Los Angeles.

Although it has worked to keep crime levels low, the MTA’s security arrangement is unusual in the world of big-city transit. Still, the MTA is angling for major changes, and recently spelled out a new security policy that will shape the coming contract, likely to cover another five years.

The policy increases the agency’s authority over police, calls for more community policing and strips fare-checking responsibilities from officers, all while seeking to reduce security expenses.

A high-ranking MTA official characterized the LAPD as being difficult to deal with during much of the past year, when the new policy was created with police input. The official said that if the LAPD does not fully embrace the MTA’s new security policy and come up with a plan to cut its costs, “they are going to lose out. The LAPD could end up with nothing.”

The perception of the LAPD as grudgingly going along with the MTA’s wishes is seen as contrasting with the attitude of the Sheriff’s Department, which eagerly signed off on virtually all of the policy changes while saying it will offer a proposal next month that could shave $6 million from security costs.

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and MTA Board Chairman and City Councilman Hal Bernson are scrambling to ensure that the LAPD keeps its transit unit.

Hahn, also an MTA board member, believes that for the best MTA security, the LAPD should handle patrols within the city limits. He worries that sheriff’s deputies responding to an emergency within city limits might have difficulty communicating with street-level LAPD units, which would be needed for backup.

The contract negotiations promise to be a political test for Hahn, who has significant clout on the 13-member panel because he appoints three other members and leads what is usually a unanimous bloc of votes. After losing out on nearly every major issue he has backed since joining the MTA last year, the mayor will need to persuade several other MTA board members to side with him or risk seeing scores of brown-uniformed sheriff’s deputies fan out daily across Los Angeles.

At one point in July, Bernson convened a closed-door meeting with interim LAPD Chief Martin Pomeroy and Sheriff Lee Baca. Bernson said Baca agreed not to bid on LAPD territory.

Baca later did an about-face when pressured by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, also an MTA board member, sources said. Baca has been on vacation and unavailable for comment.

The Sheriff’s Department’s bid is motivated in part by the chance to bring in more money. Gaining the contract, expected to run at least $60 million because it would also include policing the Pasadena Gold Line railway that opens next summer, could come close to tripling the roughly $22-million annual payment the department now receives from the MTA.

For Los Angeles, losing the contract, which provides $30 million for the city’s general fund, would be a drag on the $4.8-billion city budget, according to Hahn. The mayor, however, could not provide specifics when asked which city programs might be affected.

Provided the LAPD found the money to keep the affected officers on board, a virtual certainty, shedding the transit unit could allow about 200 officers to join normal LAPD patrols.

But for the Police Department--already reeling after a fight over the ouster of Chief Bernard C. Parks and fiercely protective of its turf--seeing sheriff’s deputies boarding buses through the city, walking through the Red Line and patrolling the light railway from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles would be a bitter pill.

“It will be unprecedented in the city of Los Angeles,” said USC professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a legal scholar and police expert, speaking of the possibility of sheriff’s deputies roaming LAPD turf. Chemerinsky speculated that though some officers might see losing the transit division as a good thing, freeing up scores of officers for regular duty, others may regard it as a “real slap.”

What’s more, Chemerinsky said, “it could lead to many more tensions between the two departments.” City Hall and LAPD officials acknowledge that if the MTA board were polled on the matter now, the Sheriff’s Department would likely win out.

The five county supervisors, who oversee the Sheriff’s Department and Baca, sit on the MTA board and are likely to side with their own agency. It is widely regarded that the only bloc firmly backing the LAPD would be the mayor and his three appointees. Right now, “We don’t have the votes,” said Cmdr. Robert Hansohn, head of the LAPD’s transit division.

Hansohn, who plans to hire an outside negotiator to help him in the talks, said that his agency is eager to keep the contract and more willing than ever to back the MTA proposals.

But he said he is worried that cutting costs could lead to an increase in crime. “It’s hard to believe the system is going to be safer” under an MTA plan that could lead to fewer officers and use of civilian fare checkers, Hansohn said.

Yaroslavsky disagrees. He said he believes the MTA could be better served by having a single law enforcement agency and that competition for the contract will serve to drive costs down for the transit agency.

“Let the best proposal win. That’s best for the MTA,” Yaroslavsky said. “City Hall is desperate to protect its turf and the LAPD. But if they want to keep the contract, they are going to have to make a more competitive proposal.”