By Nicholas Riccardi
TIMES STAFF WRITER

LOS ANGELES-Crime may be dropping at record rates but Los Angeles County's taxpayers are not feeling it in their wallets. The Sheriff's Department is seeking a $120-million boost in its budget, in part to put 259 more deputies on the streets, even though calls for help are down 5% this year. Similarly, the district attorney's office wants to increase its budget by 10%, to $200 million.

It may seem paradoxical that law enforcement agencies are growing while crime is declining across America, but police officials say that the two Los Angeles agencies - the largest of their kind in the nation - simply mirror American law enforcement's continuing expansion. That increase, some law enforcement authorities say, is justified because population is growing and crime may rise again. Moreover, police agencies in the western United States historically have been understaffed, and crime's current lull, coupled with the rise in tax receipts, enables some of those agencies to catch up, they add. (In other words, the reward the people receive for being law-abiding, is stepped up law enforcement! WFI Editor)

In Los Angeles, California, the increases - if approved by the Board of Supervisors - also will fund new programs aimed more at rehabilitation and crime prevention than traditional crime suppression. Coupling those efforts with old-fashioned policing is essential to keeping crime down, law enforcement officials maintain. "This would be like a physician treating a cancer patient, and the medication has put the cancer into remission," Assistant Sheriff Bill Stonich said. "The doctor's obligation is to continue to treat the patient and make the cancer remit by increasing the medication." (Police-state enthusiasts always lapse into the tired "cancer metaphor." Hitler used to refer to the cancer growing on Germany, that had to be "cut out." WFI Editor)

But others see the growth in law enforcement agencies as bureaucracy run amok rather than as a contribution to public safety, and the two views are colliding in a growing debate among the supervisors over whether to boost law enforcement's budgets again this year. "Crime is down. Calls for service are down. Prosecution is down, and it ought to be reflected in the budgets," (County) Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. "What I think the public resents about government is they never shut down something that isn't needed anymore."

Noting that the public still believes crime rates are rising, Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington said he is not surprised that law enforcement agencies nationwide are asking for more money. "It's the most elementary business sense to take advantage of the opportunities the market gives you," he said. "If the public is afraid of crime and you are a government administrator - which means you essentially operate a business - you give the public what they want: more cops and more protection, even if they don't need it." (This is the most outlandish logic ever offered up. First, government is NOT a business, it does not answer to the "market." Institutions are manipulating information released through the mass media, to influence the public to accept the agendas of the law enforcement agencies that dominate the republic. And second, leadership that persuades the public to accept policies they don't genuinely need, is bad leadership. WFI Editor)

Not all Los Angeles law enforcement agencies will get big budgetary boosts in the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The chronically understaffed Los Angeles Police Department will gain only 80 officers, as its $1.1 billion budget grows by only $9 million. (The LAPD has a force of about 8,000 officers, and has been described by locals as an "army of occupation." WFI Editor) "I think that would be the public's expectation - that is, a strategic increase, which is what we need," said Police Cmdr. Dave Kalish. "Nothing more, nothing less." (What the people expect is what the institutions tell them they need. WFI Editor)

Several forces have contributed to the continuing rise in law enforcement budgets, said Marie Simonetti Rosen, publisher of Law Enforcement News in New York City. The cost of benefits is steadily increasing. Agencies are only now securing the most basic computer technology and are upgrading their crime labs. (And it costs money to put a cop on every street corner, and an informant in every apartment block. WFI Editor) In Philadelphia, a crackdown on "quality of life" crimes has driven crime rates down but led the city to boost law enforcement budgets by $10 million - still less than that city's district attorney sought. The Washington Police Department, historically so cash-poor that officers had to buy their own gas, wants to add 200 officers to its payroll this year.

Perhaps nowhere are the issues as starkly displayed as in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, a $1-billion agency responsible for managing the nation's largest jail system and policing the county's unincorporated areas and dozens of its cities. The department is struggling to fill 600 vacancies for deputies and faces a staggering $108-million overtime bill, up from $38 million two years ago. Yet the agency is in expansion mode. "There's the old cliché," Assistant Sheriff Larry Waldie said. "If you're not growing, you're dying."

SOURCE: Excerpted from the 5 June, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article entitled, "Budget Requests Don't Mirror Drop in L.A. Crime Rates." Reprinted in the public service of the national interest of the American people.

(WFI EDITOR: If law enforcement did not dominate the republic, and set its agenda, the United States could not be regarded as a police state. This article highlights the kind of control police have, to influence the political landscape. When any agency controls a billion dollar budget, it gains a momentum all its own, separate from its stated mission. Furthermore, the police-state mentality views the public with suspicion and hostility, suggesting that people in general are bad, and prone to criminal conduct, were it not for the law enforcement institution. Instead of viewing the community as being naturally law-abiding, those who are inclined to fascism suspect that the only thing keeping people from breaking the law is fear of punishment. Americans who are tired of being viewed with hostility by their own government, eventually must wise up to this tendency in the republic, before the politicians go on another prison building spree.)