Crime Tops Mayor’s Race Agenda

The candidates for Los Angeles mayor continued to spar over crime Friday as Mayor James K. Hahn tried to link Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa with violent street gangs, and Villaraigosa retorted that Hahn had failed to fulfill his promise to hire more police officers.

With a month to go until the May 17 runoff, Hahn has been relentlessly attacking Villaraigosa for his previous opposition to gang injunctions, civil court orders that seek to limit the activities of gang members in areas of the city.

As city attorney, Hahn pursued the injunctions over the objections of groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. And in 1993, the ACLU’s Southern California chapter opposed Hahn’s efforts to win approval for a gang injunction against the Blythe Street gang in Panorama City. Villaraigosa was president of the chapter’s board at the time.

Villaraigosa has since said that he favors gang injunctions, prompting accusations from Hahn that the councilman is changing his position.

Hahn is now proposing a citywide gang injunction, though he said four years ago that injunctions were not the solution for every neighborhood.

On Friday, the mayor went back to Panorama City, where he said that if Villaraigosa had been successful 12 years ago, the Blythe Street gang might still be terrorizing local residents.

“What if we weren’t successful in beating Antonio Villaraigosa, the ACLU and the gang members?” asked the mayor, flanked by former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian. “How many people would have been victims of violent crimes like rape, assault, maybe even murder?”

Philibosian, who endorsed Hahn on Friday, was district attorney from 1983 to 1984.

Speaking to reporters at City Hall, Villaraigosa replied that lingering gang problems citywide were the fault of a mayor who had failed to live up to his 2001 campaign promise to expand the police force by 1,000 officers.

City records indicate that as of March 19, there were 178 more sworn officers in the Los Angeles Police Department than when Hahn took office.

The department has also been able to put more officers on patrol through reassignments.

“It’s Jim Hahn again trying to engage in the blame game, refusing to accept responsibility,” Villaraigosa said.

Hahn has said that he couldn’t expand the Police Department because the state tapped local property taxes to resolve its own budgetary problems.