Sheriff and LAPD Offer Joint Transit Patrol Plan : Security: MTA police submit a competing proposal. The merged unit would help Mayor Riordan in campaign pledge to increase the number of officers on the street.

The Los Angeles Police Department and the county Sheriff’s Department teamed up Thursday and officially submitted a proposal to take over policing of the region’s transit system.

The news already had touched off a fierce battle with transit police, who submitted a competing proposal to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday afternoon. Transit police officers now patrol the region’s buses and subway.

An independent audit of the proposals is to be released next month, the first step in a politically charged process with millions of dollars at stake.

Although auditors will review the fiscal merits of each proposal, the issue is complicated by a potentially enticing political benefit that Mayor Richard Riordan--who serves on the MTA board--could receive if the joint LAPD-Sheriff’s Department proposal wins.

The central point of Riordan’s campaign was a promise to expand the Police Department by 3,000 officers in four years. Although he has submitted an expansion plan that falls short of that goal, the proposed takeover could add hundreds of officers to the LAPD, although it also would add the significant new responsibility of patrolling the transit system.

Moreover, those officers would be paid by the MTA, helping to alleviate funding difficulties that have hampered other aspects of Riordan’s proposed expansion.

“It has the potential for being really politically charged,” said Antonio Villaraigosa, chairman of the MTA’s ad hoc safety committee. “Definitely, the LAPD and Sheriff’s (Department) are competent, world-class departments, but so are the MTA transit police. We are going to have to look at where we can get the most bang for our buck.”

In recent years, the MTA police have competed with the Sheriff’s Department and the LAPD for the opportunity to patrol various transit lines. So far, the MTA police have managed to hold onto the job, but now many of the 275 MTA officers worry that they could soon be displaced.

“We feel our jobs are being taken away,” said Lee Tainter, president of the Transit Police Officers’ Assn. “Nobody has told us we are going to have jobs. Officers are scared to death that they are not going to be able to feed their families when this is done.”

When MTA officers raised that concern with the Los Angeles Police Commission earlier this month, LAPD officials, including Chief Willie L. Williams, responded by saying the LAPD would absorb MTA officers if the LAPD proposal is accepted.

“The intent is that no one will lose their jobs,” said Gary Greenebaum, president of the Police Commission. “The entire MTA police force will be able to switch over, either to the LAPD or to the Sheriff’s Department.”

Greenebaum and other supporters of the LAPD-Sheriff’s Department team say it could utilize a range of law enforcement services, including calling on special weapons and tactics units and helicopter response teams. Greenebaum also touted the joint proposal as evidence that the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department, which have feuded in the past, are prepared to work together in providing the most efficient security for the transit system.

Many MTA officers remain convinced.

“Our officers are the best qualified and best trained. They chose transit as a career; it’s not a sideline,” Transit Police Chief Sharon Papa said in an interview earlier this week. “There is not a finer police department in the nation.”

In recent years, the MTA has come under fire for creating a two-tiered system under which 3 cents is spent on security for each bus passenger and $1.25 for each rail passenger.

The Sheriff’s Department has a $13.5-million contract to patrol the 22-mile Blue Line trolley, running from Long Beach and Los Angeles. Last year, MTA officials chose the transit police to patrol the Red Line subway, declining an LAPD bid for the same job that would have cost $4 million more.