Eds: UPDATES thruout. The Mayor’s communications office can be reached at (213) 978-0741.
By ART MARROQUIN, City News Service
RESEDA (CNS) – Hoping to fulfill a campaign promise to expand the Los Angeles Police Department, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today proposed a hike in the city’s trash collection fees to hire more officers.
“It’s a bit of a controversial plan, but I think it makes common sense,” Villaraigosa told about 40 officers at the LAPD’s West Valley Division this afternoon. “We live in a world where people want more services but they don’t want to pay for them.”
Villaraigosa’s plan calls for phasing-in a $17 increase for trash-hauling fees over the next four years.
Every new dollar collected, he said, would go toward hiring more police.
Police Chief William Bratton said he welcomed the idea.
“Over the next several years, we will be opening several new police stations, including one here in the Valley. They have to be staffed and we need resources,” he said.
Los Angeles residents currently pay an $11 monthly equipment fee for their trash containers, in addition to vehicle purchases and maintenance costs.
If approved by the full City Council, the fee hike would only apply to the residents of single-family homes. Homeowners would start paying $18 each month for trash collection when the new fiscal year begins July 1. The fee would be increased by $4 in each of the following two years, then by $2 the next year, reaching a maximum of $28.
Apartment residents would not be affected by the fee hike because their rent includes trash collection.
The city currently subsidizes the overall cost of hauling trash at a cost of $315 million annually, according to the mayor’s office.
The $11 equipment fee currently paid by Los Angeles residents is lower than what residents from all but three of the 81 other cities in Los Angeles County pay for trash collection, according to a Department of Public Works study released in 2004.
The plan to hike trash fees comes after the council agreed last month to spend $3 million to $5 million more annually to divert 600 tons of the city’s 3,600-ton daily waste stream from Sunshine Canyon in Granada Hills to landfills in Riverside and Kings counties.
City Councilman Jack Weiss, head of the council’s Public Safety Committee, called the idea “the best and most fair plan I’ve ever seen to add cops to the LAPD.
“It is a fair plan because all it asks our homeowners to do is to pay a little more for services they’ve been receiving that have been subsidized by everyone else,” he said.
Villaraigosa said the fee hike is needed to pay for 1,000 new police officers as the city grapples with a $295 million deficit in its $6 billion annual budget.
“The fact is our city officers are outnumbered, and we remain the most under-policed big city in the United States of America,” the mayor said. “This plan changes that.”
Fewer people are signing up to join the LAPD, despite a variety of programs to seek new recruits — including a $2 million advertising campaign targeting women and minorities.
Villaraigosa said he was committed to finding officers to fill the positions. He is considering incentives, such as offering $1,000 bonuses for officers who refer recruits, and increasing Web-based hiring efforts.
The city allocated funding to hire 369 officers during the current fiscal year, but the LAPD expects to bring on only 270 to 280 new hires.
Retirement also poses a problem for the department, as 1,100 officers are expected to leave the department over the next four years.
To help bolster the ranks, the LAPD and city officials are considering whether to offer incentives such as a pension buy-out for officers wanting to transfer to Los Angeles and a home ownership program to help officers buy homes in the city.
“I understand full well the dangers they face on the streets every day, and it’s my priority to give them the resources they need to stay safe,” Villaraigosa said.
Additionally, the City Council is set to decide within weeks whether a deferred retirement program for LAPD officers should be extended for another five years to give the understaffed department more time to recruit officers.
Date: 04-12-2006 5:22 PM – Word Count: 726
LAPD Officer Recruitment & Retirements
April 7, 2006
Officer Recruitment
Eds: Bratton aide Mary Grady can be reached at (213) 485-3205.
By ART MARROQUIN, City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – The Los Angeles Police Department is aggressively seeking new recruits through a variety of programs, relaxed hiring practices and aggressive advertising, police Chief William Bratton said today.
“We’re hiring and we desperately need people to join up,” Bratton said during a news conference at the LAPD’s dispatch center.
The city allocated funding to hire 369 officers during the current fiscal year which ends June 30, but the LAPD expects to bring in only 270 to 280 new hires.
“Everybody’s hiring. We’re competing for a very small pool of candidates,” Bratton said. “We have very high standards to enter the department. The irony of it is that we finally have the funds to expand the size of the department, but we’re struggling.”
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said he wants to hire more than 1,000 new officers before the end of his term.
In hopes of bolstering the force, LAPD officials relaxed the department’s stringent guidelines on hiring recruits with bad credit and those who openly admitted to past drug use.
Additionally, the city’s Personnel Department is spending $2 million in advertising during the current fiscal year to recruit more racial minorities and women as LAPD candidates.
Bratton said he also hopes to gather recruits from the Los Angeles Police Academy Magnet School Program, which was established at five high schools in 1996 to prepare about 1,185 students annually for careers in law enforcement.
The department currently allows more civilians to conduct administrative duties at police stations so that more officers can patrol the streets. But officials want to extend that opportunity to those with past law enforcement or military experience who are waiting on a background check and academy training to become an LAPD officer, according to Lt. Kenneth Garner, head of the LAPD’s Personnel Group.
Additionally, Councilman Greig Smith unveiled two proposals last month that he said would help the city attract qualified police officers and firefighters.
Smith wants to expand a home ownership program that helps officers and firefighters buy homes in Los Angeles, rather than in neighboring cities.
With the median home in Los Angeles around $575,000, some officers and firefighters cannot afford property in the city, and as a result, many public safety personnel live in suburbs such as Santa Clarita and Simi Valley, according to Smith, a reserve police officer.
Smith also wants the city to be able to buy out the pensions of officers and firefighters who want to transfer to Los Angeles from other jobs with other public safety agencies in California.
Police Retirements
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A City Council committee agreed today that a deferred retirement program for LAPD officers should be extended for another five years to give the understaffed department more time to recruit new officers.
The council’s Personnel Committee unanimously agreed to extend the LAPD’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP, which provides better retirement packages for veteran officers who agree to postpone retirement.
Extending the DROP program for the LAPD’s commanders is also in the works, as negotiations are under way with the police union, according to Cmdr. Kenneth Garner, head of the department’s Personnel Group.
The LAPD is facing a dramatic departure of seasoned officers when DROP begins pushing them into mandatory retirement next year.
More than 1,600 police officers and city firefighters who previous signed up for the DROP program will be required to retire over the next five years, including fire Chief William Bamattre, Bratton said.
In the fiscal year that starts July 1, the LAPD will lose one deputy chief, four commanders, seven captains and 116 detectives, according to a report recently prepared by Bratton.
The DROP program, initiated in 2002, allows police officers and firefighters with at least 30 years of service to continue working at full salary and receive pension payments, which are put into holding accounts.
At the end of five years, the employee gets the five years worth of pension checks. The worker also benefits because his or her pension payment rate will have been boosted by five years of cost-of-living increases.
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