ANTONOVICH PRESENTS PLAN TO ADD DEPUTIES.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

In his first speech this year as ``mayor'' of Los Angeles County, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich on Thursday proposed ways to boost the recruitment of hundreds of sheriff's deputies.

Antonovich made the comments to the Citizens Economy & Efficiency Commission, established in 1964 to allow its 21 leaders in public service, business and academia to study how to improve government and to target waste, fraud and abuse.

The Sheriff's Department wants to hire as many as 1,000 additional deputies this year, and Antonovich suggested that retired sheriff's personnel could go to community colleges and high schools to encourage students to become deputies.

He also suggested changing the current system in which rookie deputies have spend three to five years working as jail guards before being transferred to patrol jobs.

``What you need to have is some kind of rotating system where you spend time in the jail and then go out on the streets for a while and then back into the jails,'' Antonovich said. ``That would help morale.''

In an effort to bolster the number of law enforcement officers available to assist people in the event of a disaster, Commissioner Charles Parks urged Antonovich and his fellow supervisors to create a Retired Police Officers Reserve Corps.

``We have literally tens of thousands of retired police officers in this basin and should we have a catastrophe like a tsunami or a big earthquake, regular law enforcement officers would be totally committed to the safety of the public,'' Parks said. ``Many of these guys have retired at age 50 or 55 and their resources could be applied much like military reserves.''

Antonovich also discussed the future of the troubled King-Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles, which faces a review this month by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

If the hospital fails to pass the audit, the county health department, already facing a nearly $900 million deficit by 2008, would lose $200 million in federal funding. This would force the supervisors to decide whether to close the hospital and contract out with a private hospital to care for MLK's patients, or convert MLK to an outpatient facility.

Antonovich is this year's chairman of the Board of Supervisors, but chooses to use the title of ``mayor'' instead.

He explained Thursday that on the East Coast and in Washington, D.C., many bureaucrats think of the city of Los Angeles as the West Coast counterpart to New York City.

``New York City and Los Angeles County are comparable in many of our responsibilities because we provide many services to the region,'' Antonovich said. ``Many of the people in Washington are from the East Coast and think Los Angeles does the work of Los Angeles County and we lose many of our resources as a result. Funds are siphoned off.''

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com