The Daily News of Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES — The city of Los Angeles faces dire consequences — including delayed responses to 911 calls and an uptick in crime — unless the state provides millions of dollars to help pay for Gov. Jerry Brown’s prison and parolee realignment plan, city officials warned Monday.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck said it will cost at least $20 million to $25 million to supervise some 4,200 parolees that are being released within city boundaries, plus additional funds to expand anti-gang programs.
Supervising the parolees had originally been intended as a responsibility of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but Beck said it appears that agency does not have adequate personnel.
He said 150 city police officers would have to be taken off the streets to help supervise parolees.
“We often talk about what will be the final straw that breaks the back of public safety,” Beck said. “This is not a straw, this is a load of hay.”
Villaraigosa said the city received nothing in the state’s realignment budget, even though almost half of the estimated 9,000 parolees being handed over to the county this fiscal year are expected to live in the city.
“That’s not realignment,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
“That’s political malpractice.”
He sought funding for both the Los Angeles Police Department and gang intervention and prevention programs overseen by the Mayor’s Office.
The head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation disputed Villaraigosa’s comments, saying the governor provided sufficient funding and the program will help the state follow a court order to reduce prison overcrowding.
“Mayor Villaraigosa is wrong on the facts regarding realignment,” CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate said in a written statement.
“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.”
The state allotted the county $112 million this fiscal year to implement the realignment plan.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the governor’s Finance Department, said the decision for how that money is spent will be made by a local partnership that includes representation from the LAPD. The city is also getting a $6.2 million grant for policing related to realignment, he said.
“To say that there’s no money coming in is not accurate — certainly at the county level, but even at the city level,” Palmer said.
A component of the realignment plan was to have county probation officers replace state parole officers in supervising felons paroled after Oct. 1 for a nonserious, nonviolent or nonsex offense.
Since most probation officers are unarmed, they are supposed to tap the Sheriff’s Department for help when a parolee absconds.
Sheriff Lee Baca planned to assign about 70 deputies, sergeants and crime analysts for parole compliance but, as of Monday, only 15 staffers are doing that job, according to department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida.
To date, one sheriff’s sergeant and two sheriff’s deputies are assigned to the entire city of Los Angeles, the listed address of about 4,200 parolees being released this year.
Beck acknowledged that Baca did not assign more deputies because he told Baca that Los Angeles is the LAPD’s responsibility.
“This is my turf that I police — it doesn’t make any sense to have an outside entity doing (parole) compliance checks in a city where we (LAPD) respond to crime,” Beck said.
“911 calls will take longer to answer, reports will take longer to write, and our system will suffer because of an unfunded mandate placed on us by the state,” Beck said.
Villaraigosa believes that a pot of money should also be provided to programs for parolees who are in gangs or at high risk of joining them. He noted the Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development has helped reduce crime through programs such as Summer Night Lights.
Deputy Mayor Guillermo Cespedes, who heads Villaraigosa’s anti-gang initiatives, said the office needs funding to “double its capacity.”
Currently, the city spends about $2 million for gang intervention programs alone; additional money is allotted for gang prevention programs.
Villaraigosa said the concept of realignment is sound, but implementing it without proper funding threatens progress in reducing crime.
“Los Angeles has the lowest crime rate in a generation, the lowest number of homicides since 1967,” he said. “All this could change starting today.”
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