A Skewed Call for New Police Funding

Does Los Angeles have enough police? According to the promoters of Measure A on Tuesday’s ballot, L.A. County and its cities’ law enforcement resources are so meager that taxpayers must cough up $500 million a year for 10 years -- even if violent crime continues its decade-long decline.

That’s a total of $5 billion that won’t go for badly needed healthcare, housing or economic development. Yet the fact is there are plenty of police; it’s just that the distribution of officers and services falls differently, depending on the community. An analysis in 2003 by the L.A. Times found that “the LAPD has for years assigned more detectives per homicide in safer, more affluent parts of the city than in Central and South L.A. The explanation of the city’s failure to put homicide detectives where they are most needed is the story of an LAPD divided between two worlds. In one, residents jam police lines with complaints of larceny and stolen cars. In the other, people are hurt and killed in the streets.”

What we do need is meaningful and effective violence prevention and intervention programs, which Measure A provides only at the barest minimum. There are already active programs that have worked hard to end street violence yet have never received proper funding -- such as those of Homeboy Industries in Boyle Heights, Community in the Schools in the San Fernando Valley, Homies Unidos in Pico-Union, the Watts Community Self-Determination Institute and others. There is a funding ceiling, but they are in a cellar without a floor.

According to a recent Times article, major crimes in L.A. County have gone from 652,939 in 1993 to 394,590 in 2002. In that period, homicides have dropped by half. If crime is going down, why should the numbers of police and sheriff’s deputies go up?

There are other problems with Measure A:

It would guarantee funds for “intelligence gathering” by law enforcement. Intelligence on whom? Terrorists? Gang peacemakers? Critics of the police? The authorization is open-ended.

The billions in new tax funds would be divided by a committee made up of police chiefs and city officials, the very beneficiaries of the funds. There is no public input, review, participation or accountability.

Measure A falls desperately short of what we need to address the real social, economic and cultural roots of crime in L.A. County. Haven’t we already learned that we cannot adequately address crime by putting money and resources on the back end of the problem? More must be done on the front end to provide schools with enough books, rooms and teachers; decent housing; proper mental and health services and well-funded after-school programs.

Sensitive to prevention issues, the sponsors of Measure A have promised 15% of the funds for purposes such as after-school and job-preparation programs. But there are no definitions of “prevention” in the measure, and the funding is purely at the discretion of the sponsors.

Recent history shows that such promises are often broken when funds are diverted to government bureaucracies. In 2002, a court ruled that the county did not fulfill its promise to divert 10% of 1992 and 1996 park bonds to construction and maintenance jobs for at-risk youth. By the time the litigation was settled, most of the money had already been spent.

Even if we put aside justified skepticism about such promises, Measure A’s 15% for prevention and gang intervention programs over a decade pales in comparison with the 85% allotted for law enforcement. In a balanced world, that would be called theft.