Panel Asks LAPD Where It Will Find Room for New Hires

A Los Angeles City Council panel Monday directed the Police Department to promptly document its future facility needs amid growing concerns that the department is ill-prepared to accommodate the additional officers it plans to hire under Mayor Richard Riordan’s public safety plan.

This report, due back to the council’s Public Safety Committee within 30 days, could present further obstacles to implementing the Riordan Administration’s ambitious plan to hire 2,855 additional officers by mid-1998.

During Monday’s hearing, Councilwoman Laura Chick, a member of the Public Safety Committee, worried aloud that the mayor’s plan could swamp the LAPD’s existing 18 stations. She requested the facilities report.

After the report was commissioned, Police Protective League Director Dennis Zine told the panel that police are now crammed into “cubbyholes and closets” in some divisions.

“This is not an isolated problem, but a routine one,” Zine told the committee, chaired by Councilman Marvin Braude.

“You cannot pack more sardines into this can,” Zine said in an interview. “It’s shortsighted planning. I’m not blasting Riordan or the City Council though. The blame must fall on 20 years of neglect under (former Mayor Tom) Bradley.”

Cmdr. David Kalish, head of the LAPD’s facilities construction unit, said the problem will be most pronounced in the department’s older buildings.

The LAPD’s newer facilities have been built to accommodate expansion, “but in many others it will be very difficult” to fit in more officers, Kalish said in an interview.

“They’ll be more crowded than they are today--and some are quite crowded now,” Kalish said. “It is very important to have a long-term approach to expanding and maintaining our facilities, especially because of the Project Safety Plan.”

Deputy Mayor Michael Keeley said the mayor’s office welcomes the report. “It’s a good idea to consider facilities expansion,” Keeley said. “We need to match our hiring needs with space planning in the Police Department.”

Mounting concerns about the safety plan’s effect on LAPD facilities arose Monday as the police committee also questioned how the city is spending the proceeds from 1989’s Proposition 2 bond measure.

Of the $176 million raised by that measure to fund police facility improvements, only about $25 million remains available for new projects, Kalish told the committee. Altogether, 11 capital projects are being financed by the bond measure, including purchase of a recruit training center in Westchester and construction of new stations for the North Hollywood, Newton and 77th Street divisions, and expansion of the Foothill, Southwest and Wilshire stations.

Recently, however, the LAPD learned that it will have to use the bond proceeds to pay fair market value to another city agency, the Department of Water and Power, for a 45-acre site that it has long planned to acquire as an emergency vehicle and firearms training facility.

The land may cost the LAPD as much as $6 million, it has been estimated. Until recently, the Police Department believed it had a gentleman’s agreement with the DWP to lease the facility for $1 a year.

Now, the agencies plan to use an independent appraisal of the property’s value as the starting point for negotiations to set a final price.

The LAPD’s most pressing current facility needs include expansion of the West Valley and Harbor stations, replacement of the outdated Hollenbeck and Rampart stations and additional parking for the Van Nuys and Northeast stations, Kalish said. “We also need a 19th and 20th station,” he said, beyond the city’s current 18 police divisions. During the Proposition 2 campaign in 1989, sponsors said it might result in construction of a station in the mid-Wilshire area and another in the north-central San Fernando Valley.