Foothill Commander to Revive Police Unit if Drug Sales Increase : Law enforcement: The undercover narcotics team was disbanded to put more patrol officers in northeast district.

An undercover narcotics unit that was disbanded to put more uniformed officers in the northeast San Fernando Valley will be reinstated in January if drug sales markedly increase, a top Los Angeles police official said Saturday.

Capt. Tim McBride, commander of the Foothill Division, promised about 50 members of the station’s community advisory council that he will revive the so-called RECON unit if other methods of dealing with drug sales have no effect.

Community activists who objected this month when McBride disbanded the RECON unit--Rapid Enforcement Concentrated on Narcotics--reiterated their concerns at the council’s monthly meeting Saturday. Three years ago, community support saved the undercover drug unit when the station commander disbanded it.

“We are trying to get officers to take ownership of the drug problem,” McBride said. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll put RECON right back.”

McBride also remarked that it had been “a tough week” for the division because of protests over the death of a gang member shot to death by a Foothill officer. The youth, Efrain Lopez, 18, who had a high level of the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his blood, was killed as he approached an officer with a broomstick Nov. 9.

“I don’t know why lightning strikes twice, but it has here,” said McBride, referring to the beating of Rodney G. King, which also occurred in the division.

In what they said was a show of support for police, members of the advisory council did not raise the issue of the Lopez killing at the meeting.

But community activist Irene Tovar said in an interview afterward that a coalition of 10 Latino groups plans to ask prosecutors to report within 90 days whether excessive force charges will be filed against the officer who shot Lopez.

“I don’t know whether the killing was justified or not,” Tovar said. “But we should examine the department’s policies on shooting.”

Most of the two-hour meeting was devoted to how officers are deployed in the 61-square-mile division, where more than 300,000 people live.

Response time is among the slowest in the city because of the division’s size and relative lack of officers, McBride said. Foothill is about 25 officers short of the 184 needed because of retirements, reassignments and the city’s budget-driven hiring freeze, he said.

Many members of the advisory council said they were unwilling to pay higher property taxes to fund more police services. But they urged City Councilmen Hal Bernson and Joel Wachs, and a representative from Councilman Ernani Bernardi’s office, who also attended the meeting, to find other ways to hire more officers.

The three officials pledged to look for ways to augment the police force, from diverting funds from other city departments and passing an ordinance requiring the council to increase the number of police officers regardless of the effect on other city services.