Police Chief Luna Tells Community Budget Audience How LBPD Handles Gangs Without Field Anti-Gang Unit
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(Aug. 16, 2015) -- During one of city management's recent Council district budget meetings (Aug. 10), LBREPORT.com asked a question (posed for us by Ms. La Vonne Miller) directed to two of the area's Councilmembers. It's part of the same question we've asked all Council incumbents at these meetings (more on this coming.) Part of the question asked if the Councilmembers would commit to restoring all or part of LBPD's former field anti-gang unit.
Both Councilmembers tried to pass the question to LB Police Chief Robert Luna, who like all LB Chiefs is part of non-elected city management and has no power to decide how much is budgeted. The decision on budgeting services for taxpayers on this item and others is 100% the responsibility of a City Council majority subject to a Mayoral veto that six Councilmembers can override.
Until a few years ago, Councils budgeted 20 officers + 2 sergeants who were deployed in gang-impacted neighborhoods, observing conditions firsthand, interacting with residents and businesses, working contacts and gathering intelligence. Entering FY13, Mayor Foster recommended a budget without funding for this police unit but a Council majority disagreed and approved "one-time" funding for the up to half the unit (10 officers + 1 sergeant.) Entering FY14, the Council let funding for the field anti-gang unit disappear. Entering FY15 under Mayor Garcia and a new Council majority failed to fund the unit.
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Entering FY16, city management has proposed, and Mayor Garcia has recommended, a budget that fails to restore the field anti-gang unit; in the coming weeks, a Council majority will decide whether to accept this or change this.
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We provide Chief's extemporaneous statement below. Does it persuade you on what your Councilmember should or shouldn't do? Let us know (via Disqus below or Facebook or by email) in what Council district you live, roughly where you are (large x-streets) and whether your Councilmember's voted action on this is the sort of thing that will affect your vote in the next election (districts 2, 4, 6, 8 in April 2016, and districts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 + Mayor in 2018.)
[LBPD Chief Luna, speaking extemporaneously Aug. 10] ...We have a gang enforcement section. The gang enforcement section never went away. What we ended up eliminating, along with multiple specialized units when we got rid of over 200 officers, was the field component of that unit, so the way we work gangs today is very effective in that the gang detectives file criminal cases and work intelligence, feed the information to specialized units in patrol whose primary responsibility is to work violent crime. It could mean gangs. It could mean people selling narcotics who are very violent on the street. Whatever we're adjusting to because that's who's committing the violent crime, that's what we're doing. And I can give you countless examples of how that is so effective for us today.
[LBREPORT.com editor's comment: On Aug. 14, 2015, in an action we don't believe was coincidental, LBPD issued a release indicating that since May, its North Patrol Division Directed Enforcement Team has made 17 arrests of individuals allegedly tied directly to Northside Gang. LBREPORT.com reported the story here.]
Below is the record of the City Council (immediate past and present) on this subject:
Aug. 2012: Mayor Bob Foster recommends a city management proposed FY13 budget that would entirely eliminate LBPD's field anti-gang comprised of 20 officers + 2 sergeants.
Aug. 2012: The Council's Public Safety Committee, chaired by Vice Mayor Robert Garcia (chosen by Mayor Foster) holds no meetings to address the public safety impacts (police or fire) of Mayor Foster's recommended FY13 budget.
Aug. 2012: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee (chair DeLong) recommends (on motion by DeLong and Lowenthal) a roughly $1 million increase to the PD budget sum recommended by Mayor Foster.
Sept. 2012: Councilman Patrick O'Donnell makes a Council floor motion, approved without dissent, to budget a roughly $1 million more beyond what the Budget Oversight Committee recommended, to give the Chief discretion to fund up to half of the former anti-gang field unit (10 officers plus one sergeant) for one year using "one time" money.
Aug. 2013: Mayor Foster recommends what he said would be his final budget (of which he said he is "most proud") for FY14. It includes no sums to replace the expiring "one time funds" approved by the Council in Sept. 2012 that kept up to half of the field anti-gang unit afloat.
Aug. 2013: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee learns through chair DeLong's questioning that LBPD's field anti-gang unit has shrunk to only roughly 7 sworn officers through exits/attrition.
Aug. 2013: The Council's Public Safety Committee, chaired Vice Mayor Garcia, holds no meetings to address the public safety impacts (police or fire) of Mayor Foster's recommended FY14 budget.
September 2013: A few taxpayers take the time and effort to speak at Council budget hearings urging restoration of LBPD's field anti-gang unit. They include veteran NLB community advocate Laurie Angel. To hear Ms. Angel's words, click here. No LB business or neighborhood group publicly calls for restoring the anti-gang field unit. The Council enacts a FY14 budget without structural budgeted funding to restore LBPD's anti-gang field unit.
Feb. 2014: Mayor Foster endorses Vice Mayor Garcia for Mayor. The Long Beach Police Officers Ass'n PAC ultimately endorses Garcia for Mayor, as well as Council candidates Gonzalez, Price, Uranga and Richardson.
May 2014: LBREPORT.com learns and reports that LBPD management has managed to staff a skeleton field anti-gang unit by drawing personnel from budgeted positions in LBPD's Patrol Calls for Service divisions. Since the Gang assignment created vacancies in the Patrol Divisions, LBPD management backfilled the vacant Patrol positions by using overtime funded by the City Council.
July 2014: Exiting Mayor Foster recommends a FY15 with no funding for a field anti-gang unit.
July 2014: Entering Mayor Garcia recommends a FY15 budget with no funding for a field anti-gang unit.
August 2014: The Council's Public Safety Committee (now chaired by Councilwoman Price) holds no meetings on the Foster/Garcia recommended FY15 budget's public safety impacts and doesn't address restoring LBPD's anti-gang field unit.
Sept. 2014: The Council adopts a FY15 budget without structural funding for an LBPD field anti-gang unit.
In terms of the larger public safety budgeting history:
Since Sept. 2009, City Council voted budget actions (with dissent in Sept. 2011 by now-exited Schipske, Gabelich and Neal) have left Long Beach taxpayers with roughly 200 fewer officers (out of less than 1,000 deployable citywide at its budgeted height.)
Early July 2014: Exiting Mayor Foster recommends a FY15 budget (after saying a year earlier that the FY14 budget would be his last.) The Foster recommended budget doesn't propose to restore any budgeted police officers or firefighter resources for taxpayers.
Late July 2014: Entering Mayor Garcia recommends a FY15 budget that, like Foster, doesn't propose to restore any budgeted police officers or firefighter resources for taxpayers.
August 2014: Councilwoman Price (named by Mayor Garcia to chair the Public Safety Committee, along with Councilmembers Austin and Mungo) doesn't agendize meetings of her committee to discuss public safety impacts of the Garcia/Foster recommended budget and the Public Safety Committee offers no budget recommendations on public safety matters. This is effectively the same policy pursued by the Public Safety Committee when chaired by Vice Mayor Garcia under Mayor Foster.
Aug. 2014: The Council's Budget Oversight Committee (chair Lowenthal + O'Donnell and Mungo) doesn't recommend restoring police officers or firefighting resources. It "receives and files" (takes no action on) a petition signed by over 20 neighborhood groups that urges the committee to recommend restoring two parks and rec park rangers (after previous Councils cut over a dozen over several years.) [LBREPORT.com detailed coverage on the park ranger issue, click here.]
September 2 and 9, 2014: The City Council approved a FY15 budget that adds (on a successful floor motion pursued by Councilwoman Price) $300,000 beyond management's recommended level for LBPD overtime to address increased residential burglaries. The budget leaves Long Beach with a budgeted sworn police level available for citywide deployment roughly equivalent per capita to cutting roughly 30% of LAPD's officers and with three fire stations without fire stations capable of spraying water to put out fires. Mayors Bob Foster and Robert Garcia recommended this, and Councilmembers Lena Gonzalez, Suja Lowenthal, Suzie Price, Patrick O'Donnell, Stacy Mungo, Dee Andrews, Roberto Uranga, Al Austin and Rex Richardson voted for it.
July 15, 2014 "Inaugural" @ Terrace Theaater
Developing...with your comments and coming Council actions.
