County Seeks to Unify Safety Units

In back-room meetings away from the public’s view, Los Angeles County officials are moving to create one of Southern California’s largest police forces to patrol the vast network of health clinics, hospitals, parks, welfare offices and other public agencies that they believe now lack adequate protection.

Although the county is posting the job so other candidates can apply, several top officials have privately urged former Los Angeles Police Chief Bayan Lewis to take the job and assume control of the new 700-officer operation before the end of the year.

Lewis confirmed in an interview Wednesday that he wants the job.

The Board of Supervisors discussed the issue of creating the safety police department in a closed-door executive session late Tuesday, emerging just long enough to approve it in public by a 5-0 vote. The new force--actually a consolidation of three existing county police units--will be called the Office of County Security.

County officials have said that Lewis, or someone with similar law enforcement experience, is needed to ensure a smooth consolidation of the hodgepodge of police agencies and to launch an aggressive effort to improve training, discipline and performance standards for all county safety officers.

Such a consolidation would create a law enforcement agency bigger than all others in the county except the LAPD, the county Sheriff’s Department and the Long Beach Police Department, which has 836 officers.

The consolidation would cost the county about $3.6 million extra a year.

According to its supporters, creating the agency would allow the county to strengthen and streamline the entire safety police command structure, make the entire operation more professional and responsive to the supervisors, and provide flexibility in redeploying officers from parks to hospitals to welfare offices at a moment’s notice. In addition, a strong and experienced chief could improve efforts to recruit and retain better trained officers, they say.

Now, there are growing concerns among some county officials that the separate law enforcement agencies are not up to the task. According to Supervisor Don Knabe and others, many of the county’s safety officers have neither the training nor the certification in law enforcement procedures that other sworn officers possess.

Such officers now work for the departments of Health Services, Internal Services, and Parks and Recreation.

In recent years, there have been assaults, attacks and even fatal shootings in parks, welfare offices and county hospitals. Officials privately worry that such conditions will get worse as the health and welfare safety nets are cut even more.

The new chief of the safety agency would serve for less than three years. At that time, the improved and consolidated police force would be turned over to the county Sheriff’s Department, which has balked at taking over the three separate agencies because of “concerns of management,” according to one county memo.

Technically, county Human Resources Director Mike Henry will decide who gets the job, which will pay $80,000 to $115,000, according to county sources.

But the five elected county supervisors also hold considerable sway over such decisions, and several are said to be particularly enamored with the idea of having Lewis take the helm.

“I’ve heard he’s interested, and I’d be thrilled,” Knabe said. “Someone of his stature brings credibility instantly.”

Lewis had no comment Wednesday on whether he has discussed the job with county officials.

“I have told the county I’m interested,” said Lewis, 55. “I will apply for it just like a lot of other people, I suspect.”

Lewis retired from the LAPD Sept. 13, after running the operation for a few months while Mayor Richard Riordan and the Police Commission decided on whom they wanted to replace Chief Willie L. Williams. Before that, Lewis had been assistant chief and director of the LAPD’s office of operations.

After only several months of retirement, Lewis said, he is ready for a new challenge.

“I would like to be productive and go back to work,” he said. “I have found that retirement is not conducive to an active mind.

Lewis, one of two finalists for the police chief’s job in Reno this year, said consolidating the three police forces will not prove an easy task for whoever gets the job.

“There has been so many problems with it, especially in terms of it being divided up,” Lewis said.

County officials said that is why consolidation is needed.

“The big thing here is accountability,” Knabe said. “By consolidating all the safety personnel under one organization, they can be directed and spoken for by one chief.”