$500,000 Sought for Narcotics Detectives

The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday asked a City Council committee for another $500,000 to add 125 narcotics detectives to its anti-drug ranks.

In his budget proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1, Mayor Tom Bradley has already asked for $15 million for 500 new police officers. In budget hearings by the council’s Finance and Revenue Committee, Assistant Police Chief Jesse Brewer said the department also wants to promote 125 officers to narcotics detectives.

But in an interview later, Brewer said funds that the city is expecting from the federal government to pay for the 500 officers may not come through in time.

Under a federal program, the Police Department expects to get about $29 million from the sale of assets seized in local drug raids. The mayor is counting on about half of that to come through in the 1989-1990 fiscal year to pay for the expanded police staff and services.

Federal Funds

But Brewer said the decision to release the funds is up to the U.S. attorney general, and “there is no way to tell how long it will take . .

The additional narcotics detectives would represent one of the first increases in that division’s staff in 10 years, despite the city’s worsening drug problem, Brewer said. Other cities, such as New York, have greatly expanded their drug-fighting staffs in recent years.

Brewer said he did not want to discuss the staffing level in the narcotics division, but Police Administrator Al Beuerlein said the department now has about 408 narcotics detectives. That means the addition of 125 detectives would represent more than a 25% increase. Brewer said New York City has more than 2,000 narcotics detectives.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, asked whether the additional detectives would mean more seizures of drugs and drug-related assets, which would in turn help pay for the program.

Brewer said the additional detectives would be “out on the street” making arrests and breaking up sales but not necessarily making the major scores that result in netting big assets.

In another development at Tuesday’s budget hearings, controversy erupted over a proposed experiment in the Fire Department to add nine new ambulances to the inner-city fleet. The ambulances--staffed by specially trained firefighters on overtime, rather than with higher-trained paramedics--would be sent on cases not deemed to be life-threatening.

Fire Chief Donald O. Manning told council members that because of the increased work load on emergency medical calls, firefighters in busy inner-city neighborhoods are not completing all of their fire inspections and other prevention duties.

Battalion Chief Dean Cathey said the slip in prevention work is not currently a problem, but “less and less will be done unless we add more ambulances.”