Signal Tribune Newspaper

BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
Part one of a two-part series

A little more than a month ago, after much controversy, the Long Beach City Council approved the city’s 2008/09 fiscal budget, which required slashing about $16 million from General Fund expenditures. To accomplish that task, the council ordered a 10-percent reduction in the budget of every city department and council office with a few minor exceptions. On Monday night, Police Chief Anthony Batts and City Prosecutor Tom Reeves outlined how those reductions will impact the operations of their respective departments.
The two men spoke at the monthly meeting of the Wrigley Association in the recreation center of Veterans Park. About 40 people attended the meeting. (Because of space limitations, the Signal Tribune will focus on Batts’ presentation this week and cover Reeves’ comments in next week’s issue.)

Batts began by briefly mentioning events that shaped the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD) during the past 25 years. “In the 1980s we were dealing with the onset of rock cocaine and, as a result, we had a number of drive-by shootings,” he said. “Crime increased in the city of Long Beach dramatically.”
According to Batts, the crime increase stretched the LBPD thin. In the late 1980s, the city council approved a contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that gave jurisdiction over parts of Long Beach to sheriff’s deputies.
The contract lasted until the early 1990s and gave the LBPD time to develop a plan for increasing the number of its own sworn officers to provide adequate patrols for all parts of the city.
The chief noted that in the early 1990s the LBPD also initiated proactive programs designed to reach out to the city’s youth. He explained that, in certain areas of the city, many children and teenagers considered the police to be an occupying army that frequently raided their neighborhoods and arrested their family members, friends and neighbors.
To change that misconception, the LBPD began a local Police Athletic League (PAL). The League provided athletic, recreational and educational opportunities for inner city youth. The LBPD also started its own Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program. Batts noted that one of the most important benefits of PAL and DARE was that they gave youth the opportunity to interact with police officers in a positive, supportive environment. That helped the kids understand that cops were not their enemies.
Also in the 1990s, the LBPD intensified its community relations program by opening up storefront police information centers, instituting community-oriented policing, and initiating a number of outreach programs that allowed residents to attend informal meetings with police officers.
Batts has been LBPD chief since 2002. “During all six years of my tenure, we have had to cut our budget consistently,” he said, noting that in his first two years at the helm, he eliminated over 100 civilian positions in the department. “We had to shut down substations at nighttime, eliminate the DARE program and downsize community relations and (more recently) had to cut overtime.”
Batts added that, now in its seventh year in a row of budget reductions, the LBPD is cutting back more programs while focusing on increasing the level of its core function. “Any time you pick up the phone and need a police officer, that is our core function,” he explained. “We have officers in black-and-whites and detectives that get there quickly to make sure that we keep you safe.”
The LBPD, with 1,500 employees, is the city’s largest department. Batts stressed that, in order to meet budget shortfalls, the department has consistently reduced the number of its civilian employees while increasing the number of its sworn officers. That strategy, he explained, has resulted in a dramatic drop in “part one crimes,” which are crimes against people (murder, rape, robbery, assault, etc.) in the past 12 years. He stated that in 1996 the city had 62.44 Part One crimes for every 1,000 residents. By 2002 that number had dropped to 41.15 per 1,000 residents and last year it was at 33.50.
Assistant Chief Braden Phillips addressed the audience too, noting that last year’s LBPD budget was about $196 million and $183 million of that came from the General Fund. He explained that the LBPD’s recent 10-percent budget cut did not apply to its sworn officers or dispatch center employees, which meant only $36 million of the LBPD’s budget had to be slashed. “So we submitted proposals for reductions of $3.6 million to the city manager,” he said. Those proposals included eliminating the LBPD’s participation in the PAL program, and moving the nuisance-abatement program to the city’s community development department. Phillips added that the LBPD is currently exploring alternatives for keeping the front desks of its police substations open and hoping that residents will volunteer for it.
“We cut about 60 percent of the community relations functions,” Phillips said. “We transferred all but about three of the sworn police officers and eliminated 11 civilian positions from community relations.” He said that division now basically just oversees the neighborhood watch program and the police volunteer program, and disseminates information to the news media.
Phillips added that the LBPD is now in the process of collecting full cost recovery for contracts it has for police services with Long Beach City College, Long Beach Unified School District and Long Beach Transit. “We are also working with some developers to consolidate leases for some of our facilities, we have moved parking enforcement from the police department to public works,” he said, adding that the LBPD has added three administrative analysts to its civilian staff to discover more ways of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. He noted that the LBPD will soon hire a private firm to provide security to City Hall and the Main Library. “We have made very significant reductions to our helicopter flight hour program, and we are scaling back our police storefront operations,” he added.
After Phillips’ presentation, Batts took the microphone again. He explained that he was unhappy with the program cuts he had to undertake. “They are not things that I would prefer to do,” he said. “But I anticipate that next year, I will be cutting the budget for the police department again.”
According to Batts, the LBPD’s budget for the current fiscal year is approximately $200 million. The department now has about 980 sworn officers. “We have another 20 that are in our police academy right now, and another (academy) class that will begin in June of next year,” he added.

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