If citizens want significantly more police officers on city streets, they should root for a proposed initiative to raise the L.A. County sales tax by half a percent, City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski told the Community Council last Thursday. The initiative, supported and promoted by Sheriff Lee Baca and LAPD Chief William Bratton, will go on the November ballot if enough signatures are gathered by June, said Miscikowski, and it would raise ‘a significant amount of revenue.’ One-third would go to the Baca’s office, one-third to the LAPD and one-third to the remaining cities in the county. ‘Bratton has vowed, over time, to build up an additional 2,000 officers on top of his current 9,100 officers,’ said Miscikowski, who chairs the City Council’s public safety committee. She argued that a sales tax increase is the ‘best way’ to reach this goal, given the city’s bleak financial condition. The City Council hasn’t yet endorsed Baca’s initiative, Miscikowski said, pending a review by the city’s financial analyst, and she warned that because the measure would require a two-thirds vote, ‘there will have to be a significant effort by community support groups.’ Community Council member Larry Jacobs wanted to know, ‘How do you ensure that this becomes a net increase for the police and doesn’t end up in the general fund?’ Miscikowski replied, ‘There obviously has to be a guarantee of ‘new money’ for the police department. We also want to know who will be on the oversight committee for the distribution of funds.’ In the meantime, Miscikowski said, Mayor Hahn will present his budget in April, and ‘will make public safety his number one priority’no matter how dire the [fiscal] situation.’ Council member Arthur Mortell asked Miscikowski if the city is being reimbursed by the federal government for anti-terrorism efforts that drain LAPD resources. ‘Some,’ she said. ‘The stations where traffic is stopped before entering LAX are manned by LAPD officers on overtime; the city is reimbursed by the airport and they are reimbursed by the Department of Homeland Security. But by no means are we getting reimbursed for everything. We now have a whole Home Security Bureau [with about 200 employees] that never existed before, and there are security costs at the ports and elsewhere. We have to absorb these costs.’ Miscikowski reiterated that Captain Vance Proctor, the LAPD’s new West L.A. commander, has committed to maintaining a second patrol car in Pacific Palisades (2 p.m. to 2 a.m.), a move instituted early this year in response to complaints about increasingly scarce police coverage in the community. She also reminded the audience that she and fellow councilman Jack Weiss are sponsoring a motion to ban smoking at public beaches in Los Angeles, similar to the ban passed recently by the City of Santa Monica. ‘Are there resources to patrol the beaches?’ Community Council member Marguerite Perkins Mautner wondered. ‘When we passed the no-smoking ban in restaurants and bars,’ Miscikowski said, ‘we heard the same kind of question. But we’re largely a law-abiding society’as we’ve seen with public acceptance of seat-belt laws’and the smoking ban at beaches should not require a significant police patrol to enforce. Ultimately, it’s a matter of changing the culture over time.’
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