COLUMN ONE : Last Call for Liquor Outlets? : Activists have declared war on alcohol sales in L.A.’s poorest areas. But the stores are fighting back, and their state overseers are reeling from budget cuts.

This is America, Larrie Neal fumed from a sidewalk he considers his front porch. And that means if a man wants to walk down to the corner store, grab a malt liquor and drink it in the afternoon sun, nobody had better try to stop him.

“You see, every liquor store has its crowd,” said the short 52-year-old with a scruffy beard and a thick accent from his native Belize. “The rich folks don’t like to see us. They can pass their laws and even try to shut these places down, but we’re not goin’ anywhere.”

Neal’s perch is the sidewalk outside Adlong Market, a store on West Adams Boulevard that liquor store critics regard as one of Los Angeles’ worst. In the city’s poorest neighborhoods, such markets-turned-meeting grounds are packed in a dense honeycomb, one for every 700 or so residents, each with a sign shouting L-I-Q-U-O-R and a refrigerated case of cheap drinks with a stiff kick.

In three fiery days, the spring riots destroyed hundreds of such stores, accomplishing what some residents have sought for decades through official channels. Civil unrest, they say, seems to be the only alcohol control measure that works.

But it is not only in South Los Angeles, where liquor is at the heart of racially tinged disputes between African-American residents and Korean-American merchants, that the sale of alcohol has become a flash point. Throughout the Southland and beyond, ambivalence over alcohol is spreading.

The number of drinkers--although still a majority of the population--is dropping. Sales are down. From Santa Monica’s bar-lined promenade to the fortified wine outlets in the bowels of Skid Row, alcohol increasingly is considered a neighborhood nuisance.

Diverse communities are linking arms in what amounts to a new temperance movement--aimed not at prohibition but at what activists see as common sense limits on a costly, deep-seated habit. Some Jewish organizations are pushing to replace wine with grape juice during bar and bat mitzvahs to cut down on overconsumption of ceremonial wine. Korean-American groups are battling drinking problems too, treading carefully to avoid alienating the community’s many liquor merchants.

Such campaigns come as California’s official machinery for controlling alcohol has broken down. The state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is reeling from deep budget cuts that have all but halted the policing of liquor outlets.

At the same time, rules remain in place that make it difficult for communities to take up the slack. Because the state has exclusive power to regulate alcohol, local governments repeatedly have been frustrated when they try--as Los Angeles is doing in the riots’ aftermath--to impose limits on the number and location of liquor outlets.

Norma Lattiner exemplifies the new crusaders.

She is rallying her block against Adlong, which is around the corner from her house, and has joined with the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention, headed by Karen Bass, to fight the rebuilding of liquor stores leveled in the riots. Lattiner has circulated petitions, called community meetings and logged a steady stream of complaints to police officers, zoning officials and whoever else will listen.

In her view, liquor stores draw drug dealers, loiterers and prostitutes, turning her neat neighborhood north of USC into a minefield of vices. Increasingly frustrated, she has joined other activists in focusing on--and criticizing--the web of laws set up in the years after Prohibition to regulate alcohol.

As they see it, the state’s bureaucracy let them down when it loaded their neighborhoods with bars and liquor stores and then failed to contain the annoyances spilling outside.

“It’s very, very difficult to work in the system,” said Lattiner, who lives in a turn-of-the-century home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “The bureaucracy can be maddening.”

Neal, for his part, angrily opposes anyone interfering with his freedom to take a drink. He has been ticketed and hauled off to jail for hanging around outside the store. Yet he said defiantly: “What goes down my hatch is my business--not yours.”

*

Dan Toomey used to consider his job adventurous--late-night busts, secret videotaping, seamy surveillance. Then all of a sudden, in the fall of 1991, the longtime state alcohol control officer became a paper pusher, leaving the office only for lunch.

The change in job description is not just a personal concern. All over California, workers such as Toomey who used to be charged with enforcing state alcohol laws have been ordered to stay at their desks processing licenses. The budget-cutting move means that the ABC is no longer investigating liquor outlets accused of selling to minors, peddling drug paraphernalia or violating other laws.

“It’s very frustrating knowing you have blatant violators out there that we cannot do anything about,” said Toomey, an ABC manager and peace officer who had concentrated on liquor stores on Skid Row and in South-Central Los Angeles.

A law signed by Gov. Pete Wilson this fall will restore funding for the ABC. But it could be months before enforcement resumes and more than a year until the department returns to its previous, notoriously understaffed levels.

Even then, anti-liquor activists are not convinced that the flow of alcohol will be slowed. Critics say the ABC has always devoted more attention to checking the backgrounds of liquor license applicants--a holdover from the days when organized crime infiltration was feared--than on educating licensees on liquor laws or checking up on them once they are in business.

In the meantime, they say, the state issued the glut of licenses that plague South-Central today.

One liquor store is allowed for every 2,500 residents of a county. But there are effectively no limits within counties. That means neighborhoods such as South-Central can have four times the limit while the county as a whole is below the state ceiling.

The ABC has tried to restrict outlets in troubled communities. Under its “undue concentration rule,” if crime is 20% higher in a census tract than in surrounding neighborhoods--and if the number of stores exceeds the county ratio--no additional liquor stores are allowed.

But the rule has not worked.

It was approved after South Los Angeles’ licenses were in place. And it can be waived if an applicant demonstrates that his license will serve “public convenience and necessity,” a test often met in the supermarket-poor inner city by selling groceries.

Moreover, there are no limits on beer and wine stores, unlike outlets that sell hard liquor--a holdover from the days when spirits were viewed as more dangerous than other forms of alcohol.

In any event, some residents say that the primary problem in South-Central Los Angeles is not new licenses--there were fewer before this year’s riots than during the Watts riots in 1965--but the fact that so many liquor stores built in earlier generations remain.

Only more power in the hands of communities, liquor store critics say, will make a difference.

“It’s a local problem, and it ought to be handled as such,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. “What’s so frustrating is that now the state is in control, but they’re really not in control at all. This is neglect. It’s institutionalized oppression. It’s decreasing our neighborhoods’ quality of life.”

Others in and out of the liquor industry contend that handing more power to local governments would result in a hodgepodge of regulations across the state--and a deluge of alcohol money flooding into local elections.

Some also argue that the focus should be on the societal forces that make alcohol such a needed escape, not on liquor laws. These detractors decry the neighborhood activists as “neo-prohibitionists” and charge them with attempting to do piecemeal, through tighter and tighter regulations, what Prohibition failed to do en masse.

The next year could mark a showdown on alcohol in the Legislature.

The debate over South-Central’s liquor stores and other community efforts to control alcohol across the state are being watched closely. And though the liquor industry has been successful in keeping alcohol control concentrated at the state level, it has lost an influential defender, outgoing Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson), chairman of the powerful Governmental Organizations Committee.

“Every city, every cop, every mayor, every stupid city council, they want more authority,” grumbled Floyd, who was defeated in the June primary. “They have to learn that the owner of a store is not responsible for a person sitting outside with a can of booze in his hands. We don’t tell the guy that sells bullets that he’s responsible for killing somebody.

“Some of these activists are from a home where the old man was an alcoholic and he took it out on the old lady. They’re trying to dry up the state. We’ve done away with alcohol in this country once, and they want to do it again.”

One industry-backed law that Floyd pushed through the Legislature this year asks the ABC to investigate and make recommendations on the growing use of local zoning laws to limit alcohol--a study that activists fear could be a back-door attempt to consolidate state control further.

Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson, a Democrat whose Los Angeles district is blanketed with liquor stores, is one who believes that alcohol is a root of the inner-city’s problems.

She was rebuffed this year in a push for tighter alcohol rules. Her bill would have made it tougher for those selling alcohol to transfer their licenses to other parties and increased the protest powers of residents. It also would have limited new liquor licenses to one for every 2,500 residents per census tract. Opponents called her bill anti-business, alleging that it was maliciously aimed at Korean-American merchants.

Archie-Hudson plans to reintroduce her bill this month. In Sacramento, she said, “I think it’s going to be a big year for liquor.”

*

Raymond Estrada shakes his head with disgust as he tours his South Los Angeles neighborhood.

“There’s one of the stores over there,” he said. “And another one. See that one over there? . . . See the drunks? That’s an everyday occurrence. This is something we want to stop.”

The same neighborhood where Estrada, 49, used to ride his bike as a child is now too dangerous for children to play outside. Today, he spends hours sweeping the beer bottles from his sidewalk, cruising the neighborhood in search of problem liquor stores and plotting a homemade map, with liquor outlets represented by dots.

Now, with many of those dots gone--about 220 liquor stores in Los Angeles were severely damaged in the spring violence--city officials are grappling with the state’s alcohol rules as they process rebuilding applications from merchants in riot-ravaged neighborhoods.

Although their stores are gone, the merchants retain the alcohol sales rights they were issued by the state, and state law indicates that they can rebuild in the same location--even if residents such as Estrada believe that there are too many stores.

The city’s gambit is to use zoning as a roadblock against quick reconstruction.

Conditions are being added to some of the buildings’ permits; other liquor stores are being forced to go through the same costly environmental review procedures imposed on large developments. Angry hearings are being conducted before the Planning Commission. Just how many stores will reappear is a big question mark for residents and merchants.

Finding loopholes for local action in the state’s unwieldy Alcoholic Beverage Control Act is an area where Los Angeles long has been on the cutting edge. A decade ago, the city established the first zoning law that limited where new alcohol outlets could locate--an effort prompted by pressure from South-Central residents. The idea spread across the state.

But on other occasions, clamping down has not gone as smoothly.

In one Pacoima neighborhood, residents several years ago rose in a fury against three stores that they said were turning their neighborhood into a seedy party zone. The revelry outside the stores would last well into the early morning; the residents would be left to clean up the litter.

The city responded in 1990 by passing ordinances restricting the three stores’ alcohol sales hours and forbidding their sale of refrigerated beer and wine and of single cans or bottles. But a Superior Court judge threw out the restrictions, saying that they usurped the ABC’s authority.

As it stands now, cities may use their zoning powers to control alcohol outlets only as they would limit other businesses. The placement of bars and liquor stores near churches, schools and homes can be restricted, and conditions can be placed on liquor stores through conditional use permits. Outlets that cause public nuisances can be sanctioned and shut down, but only after lengthy procedures designed to give owners due process.

Other communities, too, are searching for ways to attack alcohol-related problems.

San Fernando is grappling with a proposed ban on alcohol advertising at city-sponsored events--an issue raised by activists concerned about giant inflatable Bud Light bottles and other beer promotions at a Mexican Independence Day celebration intended for families. Seal Beach put an end last year to the mass beer giveaways that used to be a staple of the beach volleyball tournaments sponsored by Miller and Budweiser.

But confusion over who is in charge of alcohol control remains so intense that some merchants ignore what local government tells them to do--essentially daring City Hall to take legal action.

On paper, Jimmie Powell cannot sell single cans of beer or post advertising at her Arena Market & Deli on South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. When she opened her store in 1990, the city also told her to hire a security guard.

But none of it means a thing to Powell. Singles continue to cross her counter. Signs plugging the latest specials hang in the window. A security guard is nowhere to be found.

“The city doesn’t have the right to regulate me. That’s the state’s responsibility,” Powell said. “If necessary, I’m willing to go to court.”

Her act of civil disobedience is not just a matter of principle.

“There’s no way I could survive financially if I operated under the permit guidelines,” she said. “My competitors in the neighborhood don’t have these kinds of restrictions. Competitively, it would be an unfair situation.”

Industry officials are aggressively fighting local initiatives. They say the way to control liquor sales abuses is strong state regulation combined with voluntary programs, such as the California Grocers Assn.’s effort to encourage merchants to clean up outside their stores, check for identification and follow other rules.

“Let’s not change the whole structure in this state because South-Central has a problem,” said Don Beaver, president of the grocers’ group. “We can solve it if we’re creative, without being unfair to the merchants.”

*

Outside Adlong, where the controversy over alcohol is played out, a man steps a few feet away from the rest of the crowd and flouts the “No Urinating” sign painted on the liquor store’s wall. A half dozen other men gulp down beers fresh from Adlong’s cooler. Here, the rules set up in Sacramento seem far removed.

Inside the store, a stream of customers steps up to owner Ching Chang’s counter with small containers of Thunderbird or Old English 800 or Fleischmann’s vodka. Chang, a Chinese immigrant who has owned the store for eight years, says he is too busy at the counter to become a policeman in the parking lot. He has only one ABC violation--for selling small plastic pipes several years ago that the authorities considered drug paraphernalia.

“I’m not causing problems here,” said Chang, leaning across the counter of his shop. “I’m giving the people what they want.”

One after another, his customers agree.

“This liquor store doesn’t cause no problems, and I live the closest,” said Wellington Middleton, 66, a contractor. “We are not troublemakers. We’re poor people. We’re happy here.”

Larrie Neal, who says he has been hanging out on the corner longer than the rest, insists that no activist is going to tell him to move on.

“Look at this,” he said, fishing a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “See this one and this one? The cops come by and ticket us. They put us against the wall and charge us with blocking the sidewalk or drinking in public. What a joke.”

A block away, inside her Victorian home, Norma Lattiner reiterates her desire to clean up the neighborhood, something she has been pushing for six years.

In that time, the community coalition has targeted Adlong as one of its problem outlets, the city has begun the long process of revoking Chang’s business license and police have launched regular sweeps of the parking lot.

Still, Lattiner is frustrated that the store lives on.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I like to have a glass of wine. I have liquor in my home. I have nothing against liquor at all. It’s the excess that’s the problem. There ought be something we can do about it. There ought to be a law.”

Times staff writer George White contributed to this story.

Next: The corner liquor store may take the heat, but the real power in the liquor industry is held by wholesalers and manufacturers.

BACKGROUND

Responsibility for liquor laws was given to the states in 1933, when it became clear that a blanket federal ban on alcohol worsened bootlegging and corruption. The result is a patchwork of rules that vary dramatically from one state to the next. Plop South-Central Los Angeles down in the middle of Idaho and there would not be the same raging debate over the number of liquor stores. No private sales of spirits are allowed in Idaho, and some residents complain that there are too few government-run places to buy alcohol. Move the riot-ravaged neighborhood to Texas, and the debate would take on a different twist. There, residents could push for a referendum to eliminate liquor outlets.

Policing Liquor in California

Overseeing a myriad of alcohol sales outlets is an uphill battle in California. Some details:

Enforcement: The state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, headed by former Inglewood Police Chief Jay Stroh, was a division of the State Board of Equalization until 1955. Concern then over the mixture of money and alcohol led legislators to create a separate department charged with regulating and licensing alcohol outlets.

Agents: The ABC had one enforcement agent for every 400 outlets in 1977. That was cut to one agent per 701 outlets in 1987. Today, there is roughly one agent per 715 outlets.

Licenses: The state issues nearly 60 kinds of liquor licenses. There are 753 wine grower licenses, 137 boat licenses, 64 bed and breakfast licenses and 14,936 convenience store licenses. Statewide, 12,563 liquor stores are licensed to sell beer, wine and spirits. The most common liquor outlets are restaurants; 20,136 in the state have licenses.

Population limits: These apply to the sale of spirits only. There can be one liquor store license for every 2,500 residents of a county and one license to sell spirits in a bar for every 2,000 residents. No state restrictions apply to beer and wine licenses. Licenses must be renewed annually, but approval is routine.

Hours: No alcohol can be sold in the state between 2 and 6 a.m. Local communities can use zoning restrictions to put additional limits on outlets.

L.A.’s GLUT OF LIQUOR STORES

Across Los Angeles County, there are more than 7,200 stores selling packaged liquor--either beer and wine, as in convenience stores, or the full range of alcoholic beverages. This map below, which locates a representative sample of 5,650 liquor outlets, shows that the stores are most densely concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods of Los Angeles and Long Beach. State law limits full-service liquor stores to one for every 2,500 residents in a county. But there are no state restrictions on where in a county those stores are located. And there are no restrictions on the number of beer and wine outlets.

Alcohol Almanac

Beer, wine and hard liquor are ubiquitous--yet controversial--features of American life. Here are some basic facts about alcohol:

THE CONSUMERS

* Who drinks: In a Gallup Poll in February, 64% of respondents said they drink alcohol. Beer was preferred by 47% of those questioned--and by 71% of those under age 30.

* First drink: The average child has his first drink at age 12. By the senior year of high school, 90% of students have consumed alcohol.

THE ECONOMICS

* Spending: U.S. consumers spent $92.5 billion on alcoholic beverages in 1990. More alcohol was purchased than milk, soda and orange juice combined.

* Economic damage: The annual economic cost of alcohol abuse in the United States is an estimated $136 billion, according to a 1990 study. Lost employment and reduced productivity accounted for 61% of the costs.

* Production: From 1980 to 1990, beer production increased marginally, from 5.5 billion gallons to 5.9 billion. Wine production dropped from 478 million gallons to 423 million gallons. The production of spirits; dropped more steeply, from 452 million gallons to 378 million gallons.

IMAGE MAKING

* Sponsorship: The brewing industry is second only to the tobacco industry in the amount of money it spends sponsoring community organizations, events and scholarships.

* Advertising: In 1990, $752 million was spent on beer and wine advertising and $291 million was spent on distilled spirits advertising.

THE CONSEQUENCES

* Violence: In roughly one-half to two-thirds of homicides and serious assaults, alcohol is found in the perpetrator or victim, or both.

* Ailments: The leading medical cause of death directly attributable to alcohol is alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver; it is the 11th most common cause of death in the United States.

*

A Liquor Store on Every Corner?

Before the spring riots, there was a liquor store at virtually every major intersection in South Los Angeles, as this map shows. A debate is raging over whether those stores should be rebuilt.

Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Impact Databank. California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control data compiled by Richard O’Reilly, Times director of computer analysis.