Study Sides With Critics of Sheriff

Los Angeles County could save tens of millions of dollars if it charged more for the sheriff’s services it provides to 40 cities, concludes a long-awaited county report that was released Thursday.

The analysis, requested by Supervisor Gloria Molina, comes as Sheriff Lee Baca is promoting a measure to raise the sales tax to fund law enforcement and is freeing thousands of inmates from jails to cut costs.

The report confirms what Molina has long suspected: that the county is subsidizing the cost of law enforcement in Santa Clarita, Compton, West Hollywood and other cities that have hired the Sheriff’s Department to police them.

“These facts tell us very clearly that there is an imbalance,” Molina said. “This is the beginning of a series of negotiations that need to start immediately. We have to put a mechanism into place to start sharing some of these responsibilities for the escalating cost of law enforcement.”

The contract cities pay a combined $174 million a year -- roughly a tenth of Baca’s overall budget -- for a complete package of police services.

Under a 1973 policy adopted by the Board of Supervisors, however, the cities are charged only for patrol deputies and some support costs.

The cities are not billed for dozens of other services, including fingerprint identification; homicide, narcotics and arson bureaus; recruit training; and the county crime lab. Overall, such services cost the county $253 million per year, the report said, with an unknown share being spent on the contract cities.

Traditionally, the Sheriff’s Department has not tracked what percentage of its services is offered to contract cities, but it calculated a few rough estimates suggesting that a significant share was flowing to those cities.

According to the report, contract cities use 40% of the homicide bureau’s services, 39% of scientific services, 48% of the arson-explosives detail, 48% of the special enforcement bureau services, and 24% of helicopter support.

“It’s not rational for the county to be letting prisoners out of jails ... and leaving money on the table,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “This is arguably owed to us.”

In Lancaster, a contract city that had two murders in the last three days, Mayor Frank Roberts reacted with dismay to the county’s analysis.

“You know, cities are strapped right now,” Roberts said. “Cities are going to have a whale of a time if we have to up the ante for sheriff’s services. We’ll probably be looking to curtail services.”

But in Santa Clarita, a city that prides itself on being one of the nation’s safest of its size, Mayor Pro Tem Cameron Smyth said he would be reluctant to pull deputies off patrol, even if they cost more.

“People love Santa Clarita because it’s a safe community,” Smyth said. “If I have to choose between keeping the same number of cops on the streets and cutting something else, I’m going to choose law enforcement.”

The county has already quoted prices to cities for the coming year, so it would not be able to raise rates until July 2005 at the earliest.

If the supervisors decided to increase prices, cities that fielded their own police forces, such as Long Beach and Glendale, could also wind up paying more for using county services.

“It opens the door,” said county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen, who wrote the report along with Auditor-Controller Tyler McCauley and Chief Deputy County Counsel Raymond G. Fortner.