State Should Pay for Extra Cops: Mayor

Los Angeles is taking 150 police officers – enough to staff half of a large patrol division – off their regular beats to prepare for an onslaught of state parolees expected under a plan to reduce state prison overcrowding.

 

Under a court order to cut prison rolls by 30,000 inmates, California last week began transferring some low-level offenders to county jails. At the same time, the state is handing off the oversight of parolees to county governments.

But Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck said Monday that he believes many of the parolees will wind up on the streets of Los Angeles – with inadequate support to keep them from committing crimes anew.

 

Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called on Gov. Jerry Brown to help pay for the 150 officers they say will be necessary to staff gang intervention efforts and other programs aimed at policing the parolees.

"Those 150 officers are going to come right out of the streets of Los Angeles,” Beck said. “So 911 calls will take longer to answer, reports will take longer to write and our system will suffer.”

Local counties will receive funds to oversee the parolees and house the low-level inmates – but cities get little or nothing to help with any issues that spill over onto their turf, the police chief said.

According to state figures, about 6,000 parolees will be released in Los Angeles County in the coming months, and about 7,800 low-level offenders will be transferred from state prisons to county jails here.

 

The Brown administration’s top corrections official, meanwhile, said Villaraigosa was “wrong on the facts” about the program.

"Public safety experts, including the California Police Chiefs Association and California Sheriffs Association, support the law because it’s the only viable plan to comply with the Supreme Court’s inmate reduction order, and it’s fully funded,” said Mathew Cate, head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Brown Administration spokesman H.D. Palmer said the state will pay $112 million to Los Angeles county for the program. The county is expected to parcel out the money to whatever agencies need it – whether they are affiliated with county or city governments. A police chief from a local city must serve on the commission that distributes the money in each county, Palmer said.

In addition, he said, the city would receive $6.2 million to augment its police services.