Mayor's Budget Targets Police Overtime as Northeast Crime Continues to Fall

LAPD's Northeast Division is on pace for an overall reduction in crime for the 19th year in a row, according to its own statistics released on Monday.

But Capt. William Murphy said that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed cuts to the police department's overtime bank--which would force officers to take time off once they accumulate a pre-determined number of overtime hours--could put a halt to that progress.

During a meeting of the Northeast Division's Community Policing Advisory Board on Monday night at the Glassell Park Recreation Center, Murphy said that, according to statistics provided by LAPD COMPSTAT Unit, violent crime is down 36.9 percent compared to this time last year.

According to COMPSTAT's numbers, Northeast has seen the largest decrease in violent crime of any division within LAPD. Additionally, property crime is down 19.1 percent, good for seventh in the department. Part 1 Crimes--which include homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson--went down by 21.9 percent, the second greatest decrease in the department.

"We are going to beat last year's stats, and we are going to beat them pretty significantly," Murphy said.

However, as the mayor targets $80 million in police overtime funding in an effort to close the city's $457 budget shortfall, Murphy said that the trend of falling crime numbers could come to a halt in the coming year.

"If we get our budget cut, if we go back to the kind of deployment we had back in the past [before the numbers started to go decrease], you'll get the kind of policing you pay for," Murphy said. "No question about it, crime will go up."

Murphy said that, in year's past, officers who worked overtime were paid from the department's overtime bank.

If that $80 million fund is cut, officers who worked overtime would instead need to be compensated in vacation time, Murphy said.

"When a guy hits a certain number of deployment hours, you have to send them home, you lose them from deployment," he said. "That could hit us for about 600 shifts that are ten hours long, and it would peak during the summer time when crime is generally greater and officers are working more overtime."

Deputy Mayor Matt Szabo, who gave a brief budget presentation during the meeting, said that the reduction of the overtime bank could be avoided if the Mayor's office and the Los Angeles Police Protective League reached an agreement though which officers would agree to put a greater portion of their salary toward pension benefits.

According to a budget packet presented by Szabo, the amount the city pays out in pension and health benefits has increased by $322.8 million dollars since 2006.

Sgt. Danny Roman, though, said there were also risks to reducing pension benefits for officers as well.

"If you're offering a funky pension, there are a lot of young cops who are going to go to other cities like Montebello, Santa Ana, Alhambra, that are paying more," Roman told Szabo. "It's not an easy job you guys have trying to figure this out."

Murphy also pointed out that union members might balk at agreeing to pay a greater portion of their salary toward pension benefits, as those changes would require intense bargaining to roll back in the future.

Officers currently pay about 9 percent of their salary per year toward their pensions, Murphy said.

However, though as a captain he is not enrolled in LAPPL's general membership, Murphy said he favored a pension reform plan as long as it meant maintaining current deployment levels. 

"A lot of times in government, you wonder if the pay in is worth what you get back," he said. "I think our numbers speak for themselves."

Some community members who attended the meeting questioned why the Mayor's officer was looking to make such deep cuts to a department that seemed to be producing positive results.

Szabo pointed out that, given how great a percentage of city's budget goes toward funding police and fire, it would be nearly impossible to make cuts without affecting those departments.

"About 70 percent of our budget goes toward police and fire," he said. "There aren't too many other places we can look."