Council OKs Contracting of MTA Policing

Having found a way to screen officers moving from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s police force to the Los Angeles Police Department, the City Council on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a hybrid approach to transit policing that stops short of an outright merger of the two forces.

With little dissent, the council voted 11 to 1 to have the LAPD enter into a contract with the MTA to police subway, bus and light rail lines now patrolled by the transit agency’s officers.

By replacing a full-fledged merger with a contract, the LAPD will be allowed to keep out transit police officers who fail to meet the department’s standards, a concern that arose after 43 MTA officers failed LAPD background checks.

The council’s action sparked an immediate outcry from the MTA police union. Sgt. Robert Delgadillo, a union representative, said a lawsuit seeking to block the move was a possibility, because transit police were under the impression that they would be guaranteed positions with the LAPD.

He suggested that the council had changed the rules of the game after the merger of the MTA police and the LAPD had been agreed to. “We feel that all of our officers are qualified and should all go over” to the LAPD, Delgadillo said.

But satisfied that the contracting approach will prevent the LAPD from having to take any problem officers, Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, told her colleagues: “I have no more fears or concerns that this is not in the best interests of the city. I believe that it is.”

Mayor Richard Riordan, who is vacationing in France, issued a statement praising the council’s action and said the agreement “will provide bus and rail passengers with better public safety, and will help move Los Angeles toward the goal of ‘one city, one police department.’ ”

To that end, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks said that after the MTA contract is completed, he plans to develop “a one-police strategy for the city” that will include the now independent airport and harbor police forces.

Once MTA officers have been certified and brought through the city’s Police Academy, Parks said, they will become LAPD officers and will wear the department’s uniform while patrolling buses and trains.

Councilman Nate Holden, the lone council opponent, called the contract flawed and unfair to the city and its taxpayers.

Under terms of the revised deal, the MTA will pay the LAPD as much as $23.4 million the first year for transit police services. The LAPD will hire as many as 208 sworn officers and 30 civilians in much the same lateral manner that it hires officers from other police departments.

Linda Bohlinger, the MTA’s deputy chief executive officer, said she is happy with the contract plan and expects it to be completed by October.

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Under the package approved by the council, she said, the MTA will contract with the LAPD, and the MTA’s officers will apply for positions with the department. But the LAPD is not obliged to accept all of the transit officers who apply.

“There may be some officers who will not be moved into the LAPD in this lateral transfer,” she said. “We will try to help anyone who is left behind into new positions elsewhere.”

MTA Police Chief Sharon Papa expressed relief that the council had made a decision after postponing final action for weeks while the contract approach was devised. “For a while, they didn’t seem interested in a partnership,” she said.

Still to be negotiated is a separate merger of MTA transit police with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. That issue is expected to come before the MTA board as early as today and the Board of Supervisors next month.

Times staff writer Hugo Martin contributed to this story.