Eastside Women Blast Polanco’s Prison Vote

Chanting “No jail!” 150 placard-carrying demonstrators circled newly elected Democratic Assemblyman Richard Polanco’s Highland Park district office on Monday, protesting a key vote by Polanco that may have paved the way for construction of a state prison in East Los Angeles.

The protesters charged that Polanco “sold out” when on June 5, two days after winning election to the Assembly, he provided the deciding vote that sent a prison construction bill out of the lower house’s Public Safety Committee.

The bill then went to the Ways and Means Committee, which also approved it and sent it to the full Assembly. No formal vote has been taken, but influential legislators from both parties have expressed support for it.

Women in Protest

Organizers of the Monday protest, a group called Mothers of East Los Angeles that has banded together to fight the proposed prison, demanded that Polanco join their side. Waving their hand-made signs along York Boulevard, the group marched for about an hour before dispersing.

“Two days after his election, he . . . told East Los Angeles, his own people, to ‘go to jail,’ ” said Lucy Ramos, a founder of the Mothers group. “With that vote he told his people that he could not represent the best interests of his people.”

Polanco was on the Assembly floor on Monday and did not return telephone calls to his office. But after the committee vote, he told reporters he had not made up his mind whether to support construction of a prison in East Los Angeles or in Castaic, another suggested location.

He voted for the East Los Angeles location in committee because he wanted to “allow the process to continue,” he said then.

The selection of a site for the prison has become a political football tossed between Gov. George Deukmejian, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and competing legislators.

The prison is envisioned as a 1,700-bed medium-security facility, to be used either as a processing center for new inmates or as a psychiatric treatment center.

Light-Industry Area

Deukmejian supports construction of the prison in a light-industry area at 12th Street and Santa Fe Avenue. But Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, in whose district the site is located, led a fight against the East Los Angeles site and proposed that the prison be built in Castaic.

Eastside civic groups likewise opposed building a prison in East Los Angeles, charging that it could place residents of the neighborhood in danger. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has also expressed opposition to the site, saying Castaic is the better location.

Brown blocked Deukmejian’s prison construction bill last year, but recently he said he changed his mind and intends to vote for the bill.

Brown placed Polanco on the Public Safety Committee shortly before Polanco cast the vote that kept the East Los Angeles prison bill alive. Polanco replaced an assemblyman on that committee who had vowed to oppose the East Los Angeles site.