Keeping the peace: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa needs to keep on track to make L.A. America's safest large city

LA Daily News Editorial
Aug 29, 2010

WHEN it comes to policing Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has a legitimate boast. The city may seem like it's falling apart, but it's safer than it has been in decades. Crime is down significantly from the terrible '90s and has been going down consistently for the last few years even as the population increased. The figures from 2009 show major crime in the city hit 1950s levels, and 2010 is shaping to continue the trend.

Meanwhile, the consent decree has been lifted from the Los Angeles Police Department and, with it, the taint of scandal that rocked the department in the 1990s and made L.A. the butt of national jokes. Deservedly, L.A. has lost its reputation as the murder capital of the country.

This was no random fluke. Former Mayor James Hahn hired a smart police chief in William Bratton, who reorganized the department into a more efficient modern force, and he supported Bratton's grand expansion plan. When Villaraigosa was elected mayor in 2005 he wisely committed himself to Bratton, as well, and raised the stakes even higher. The mayor said he was going to hire 1,000 new cops, bringing the force up to what many think of as the bare minimum for a city this size: 10,000. Bratton thought the number should be higher, based on his experience in New York and Boston, but he still was glad to see the chronically underpoliced force grow.

Villaraigosa went so far as to find a reliable funding source for this growth by doubling trash collection fees on homeowners.

Progress aside, policing in Los Angeles is one area in which Villaraigosa cannot simply wipe his hands and say "mission accomplished." Bratton resigned last year, and the City Council and police officers' union have been pushing for a hiring freeze since the budget deficit became a reality. Now, more than ever, the mayor needs to recommit himself to his promise to make Los Angeles the safest large city in America.

In recent weeks, the Daily News has called on the mayor to get back to work and use the remaining three years of his second and last term to fix this broken city. This week, we're asking the mayor to do three things to keep L.A. on the right policing track.

1. Keep hiring

Adding 1,000 new cops and getting the force to the magic number of 10,000 officers hasn't been easy. Although at one point last year the LAPD actually reached the 10,000 mark for a moment, the commitment to growing the department has slipped with the city's recent economic woes.

To the mayor's credit, it didn't slip as much as it could have. Over the last year, some City Council members have made repeated efforts to freeze the hiring of new recruits. The police union also pushed for a freeze on new hiring, figuring they'd rather have raises for existing cops than more colleagues. But a freeze wouldn't have simply kept the department at current levels. Because of attrition - retirements and terminations - it would have meant the department would have actually shrunk.

That was unacceptable to the mayor. Yes, the city is reducing in most every other department, so why should the LAPD get a pass? For two reasons: One, because the city hasn't stopped collecting that trash collection fee to pay for the officers; and, two, the city can recover quickly from shortened library hours, from a delay in pothole repair, from parks gone raggedy and from fewer people writing fewer reports in City Hall. The city can't, however, absorb the danger of letting criminals feel comfortable victimizing people in Los Angeles.

2. Hire differently

One of the city's intractable budget problems is commitments it made to current and past employees in the form of salaries and benefits. And police officers have some of the richest benefits and best retirement deals in City Hall.

That's not going to change much since the city is limited in what it can alter in current benefits except through minor negotiations. But LAPD simply has to have a more affordable plan for new hires. The charter requires that reforms to police and fire pensions be voted on by the public. And that's what the mayor should push for - a March ballot measure to establish a second tier of benefits for new hires. Ideally, it would establish a defined-contribution, 401(k)-like plan, while raising the retirement ages and lowering the payouts. Right now, an officer can retire with up to 90 percent of his or her best year's pay. That should change.

Critics will argue that this will make it hard to fill LAPD jobs. We think the cachet of working for the modern LAPD, coupled with a stable job with a starting salary of more than $50,000 will still be enough of a draw in a city with a real unemployment rate of 25 percent.

Last week, Villaraigosa said he intended to push for a future ballot measure to create a new pension arrangement for new public safety personnel. We will hold him to that.

3. Dump Special Order 40

Here's what Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order 40 says:

"Officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person."

Here's what people think it means: LAPD officers can't arrest illegal immigrants. LAPD officers can't ask people they arrest about their immigration status. LAPD officers can't talk to ICE about illegal immigrants who they arrest. LAPD officers can't even utter the word "immigrant" out loud or they will be personally fired by the mayor himself.

None of those things are actually correct - in fact, the policy specifically directs officers to notify immigration officials (by "teletype," showing just how out of date this directive is) when an "alien" is arrested.

But the actual words of Special Order 40 no longer matter. The 31-year-old policy has been eclipsed by angry politics of the moment and its meaning has been so lost in the din of the immigration fight that we think it is doing more harm than good.

This is not a call for a return to the pre 1979-days when officers were required to ask everyone about their immigration status - even if they were just reporting a crime. It is not even a call to adopt an Arizona-like law. But it is a call to update what is an extremely anachronistic policy and replace it with one that reflects the needs of the 21st century.

The L.A. in which then-Police Chief Daryl Gates created Special Order 40 was one very different from the L.A. of today. Illegal immigrants were a much smaller percentage of the population, lived in the shadows and were marginalized by society. Today, illegal immigrants are empowered and have lobbies and advocates and, most significantly, the ear and sympathies of many of the city's elected officials. Today, we live in a city shaped by the explosion of unchecked illegal immigration, with violent drug cartels and gangs operating with impunity on both sides of the border.

What's more, it's not clear that cops even know exactly what's required of them under Special Order 40. A report from 2001 on the Rampart scandal found that some officers didn't follow the practices of that order, opting to not report illegal immigrants to federal officials.

Villaraigosa should dump Special Order 40 and ask Chief Charlie Beck to come up with it a replacement policy that makes better sense for today's issue, something that makes clear that criminals who are illegal immigrants will get special treatment - right off to jail or deportation. One that makes it clear that cops can and do work with federal immigration officials to identify illegal immigrant criminals.

For the sake of future debate, however, we suggest a replacement without a catchy name like, Police Procedure 12.5/98(c). That's a big mouthful for radio.

LAPD is one part of city government that is working right, at least for the moment. And it's one of the most crucial to maintaining the safety of the people and the assets of this city. Villaraigosa can't let his promise to the people of Los Angeles wane on this one.