CITY PLANS CRACKDOWN ON NEWSRACKS.

Byline: Patrick McGreevy Daily News Staff Writer

Bolstered by a recent Supreme Court decision, Los Angeles city officials proposed a crackdown Monday on about 1,700 newsracks that sell sexually explicit material on city sidewalks.

The council Public Safety Committee directed the LAPD and City Attorney's Office to develop an enforcement plan that would remove newsstands that are not supervised by adults to prevent minors from having access to ``harmful'' material. The enforcement plan is due back in committee in one month.

The 1994 state law allowing the removal of unsupervised, coin-operated newsracks with harmful material was upheld March 17 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Assistant City Attorney Byron Boeckman said the courts have given the city clear power to ban sexually explicit publications from coin-operated newsracks that are not supervised by adults.

He said newsrack operators could keep the newsracks available if a system is developed requiring users of the newsracks to obtain a special token from an adult at a nearby business.

For instance, a liquor store might be able to sell tokens for a newsrack in front of the store.

The city Street Maintenance Bureau estimates that about 8.5 percent of the 20,000 newsracks on city sidewalks may potentially be in violation of the court-approved statute, said bureau director Gregory Scott.

Scott said that if the city were to adopt an enforcement plan based on the court decision, his office would have to inspect all 20,000 newsracks and tag those found to be in violation of the law.

The city would have to give the newsrack owners a chance to appeal, a process that could take six months, Scott said. The city then could impound any newsracks that do not comply with the city orders.

However, the industry may bring itself into compliance, lessening the need for city enforcement efforts.

Stanley Fleishman, an attorney for some newspapers and newsrack vendors, did not return calls for comment Monday. However, he told the Daily News last month that he would advise clients to tone down the content of papers to comply with local rules.