Budget Requests Don’t Mirror Steady Drop in Crime Rates

Crime may be dropping at record rates, but Los Angeles County’s taxpayers are not feeling it in their wallets.

The Sheriff’s Department is seeking a $120-million boost in its budget, in part to put 259 more deputies on the streets, even though calls for help are down 5% this year. Similarly, the district attorney’s office wants to increase its budget by 10%, to $200 million.

It may seem paradoxical that law enforcement agencies are growing while crime is declining across America, but police officials say that the two Los Angeles agencies--the largest of their kind in the nation--simply mirror American law enforcement’s continuing expansion.

That increase, some experts say, is justified because population is growing and crime may rise again. Moreover, police agencies in the western United States historically have been understaffed, and crime’s current lull, coupled with the rise in tax receipts, enables some of those agencies to catch up, they add.

In Los Angeles, the increases--if approved by the Board of Supervisors--also will fund new programs aimed more at rehabilitation and crime prevention than traditional crime suppression. Coupling those efforts with old-fashioned policing is essential to keeping crime down, law enforcement officials maintain.

“This would be like a physician treating a cancer patient, and the medication has put the cancer into remission,” Assistant Sheriff Bill Stonich said. “The doctor’s obligation is to continue to treat the patient and make the cancer remit by increasing the medication.”

But others see the growth in law enforcement agencies as bureaucracy run amok rather than as a contribution to public safety, and the two views are colliding in a growing debate among the supervisors over whether to boost law enforcement’s budgets again this year.

“Crime is down. Calls for service are down. Prosecution is down, and it ought to be reflected in the budgets,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “What I think the public resents about government is they never shut down something that isn’t needed anymore.”

Noting that the public still believes crime rates are rising, Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington said he is not surprised that law enforcement agencies nationwide are asking for more money.

“It’s the most elementary business sense to take advantage of the opportunities the market gives you,” he said. “If the public is afraid of crime and you are a government administrator--which means you essentially operate a business--you give the public what they want: more cops and more protection, even if they don’t need it.”

Not all Los Angeles law enforcement agencies will get big budgetary boosts in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The chronically understaffed Los Angeles Police Department will gain only 80 officers, as its $1.1-billion budget grows by only $9 million.

“I think that would be the public’s expectation--that is, a strategic increase, which is what we need,” said Police Cmdr. Dave Kalish. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Several forces have contributed to the continuing rise in law enforcement budgets, said Marie Simonetti Rosen, publisher of Law Enforcement News in New York City. The cost of benefits is steadily increasing. Agencies are only now securing the most basic computer technology and are upgrading their crime labs.

In Philadelphia, a crackdown on “quality of life” crimes has driven crime rates down but led the city to boost law enforcement budgets by $10 million--still less than that city’s district attorney sought. The Washington Police Department, historically so cash-poor that officers had to buy their own gas, wants to add 200 officers to its payroll this year.

Perhaps nowhere are the issues as starkly displayed as in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a $1-billion agency responsible for managing the nation’s largest jail system and policing the county’s unincorporated areas and dozens of its cities.

The department is struggling to fill 600 vacancies for deputies and faces a staggering $108-million overtime bill, up from $38 million two years ago. Yet the agency is in expansion mode.

“There’s an old cliche,” Assistant Sheriff Larry Waldie said. “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

For months before the county’s staff prepared next year’s budget, newly elected Sheriff Lee Baca floated a list of ambitious proposals, ranging from reopening jails that had been closed because of delayed maintenance to hiring 1,000 more deputies. County budget staff gave the agency a $63-million increase, but Baca wants an additional $63 million to expand patrols, reopen three jails and expand innovative rehabilitation programs for inmates.

Underwriting New Programs

Baca has been particularly vocal about a range of rehabilitative projects and nontraditional approaches to policing. He wants to hire 50 “town sheriffs” to become figures in unincorporated areas, and to reopen Biscailuz Center to establish domestic violence and drug treatment programs there and at a reopened Sybil Brand Institute for women.

“The sheriff does not believe that someone should just sit in a cell and do nothing and not have the opportunity to improve themselves and get involved in programs so they can start thinking about not coming back” to jail, Waldie said.

Supervisors are divided on whether to give Baca the money he wants, with some wary of the financial problems in the agency but wanting to give the new sheriff a break.

Politics, of course, drives much of the process, and among the stations the agency would refurbish would be one in the district of each of the three supervisors up for reelection next year.

In the massive county bureaucracy, which provides an array of services to Los Angeles County’s more than 9 million residents, law enforcement priorities often beat social service ones. Although the majority of the county’s $14-billion budget is spent on social services like health and welfare, most of that money comes from the federal government and cannot be spent elsewhere. The supervisors spend a large part of the county’s own $2.5 billion on law enforcement needs, according to an analysis by the county budget office.

Noting that many communities in her district still suffer from serious crime, Supervisor Gloria Molina said the Sheriff’s Department still needs to justify its numerous requests. “I’m not so sure they’re going to get approved,” she said.

Conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich countered that the sheriff deserves all he can get. “Crime is not eliminated,” he said. “If we start cutting back on those officers, we are shortchanging the community.”

D.A.’s Office Under Fire

Although the sheriff’s proposals have dominated discussion at the county’s Hall of Administration, a discussion of more modest increases in Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti’s budget--up by $18 million-- touched on similar issues.

Garcetti wants an additional $6.7 million from the supervisors, and most of that would be spent on a quality of life program that couples prosecutors with local governments to target problems like graffiti and gangs.

At a budget hearing two weeks ago, Garcetti drew flak from Antonovich, a frequent antagonist, for another aspect of that program--the use of five non-attorneys as “community relations” specialists acting as liaisons between the district attorney’s office and community and governmental groups.

“Isn’t there a better use of resources, to have three additional district attorneys prosecuting in the courtroom, than having a community relations component?” asked Antonovich, who in an interview referred to the representatives as “a PR firm.”

Garcetti replied: “My job, as I see it, is to protect the community. We protect the community in the traditional way of taking the bad guy off the street, but also energizing the community, getting other community groups and elected officials focused on preventing crime.”

Yaroslavsky asked Garcetti if he believed there was any area of his budget he could cut to fund his new programs. The district attorney said there was not.

Garcetti pointed out that a recent audit of his crime prosecution operation found it “woefully underfunded” compared to other offices in the state, spending only $365 per case filed while the statewide average is $581. His staff said later that the number of cases they are prosecuting remains steady, despite the drop in crime.