South Central Organizing Committee

A leader of the South-Central Organizing Committee has called a proposal that residents of South Los Angeles pay a special tax for more police a "half-baked, ill-conceived and potentially dangerous idea." The City Council agreed Wednesday to a plan by Councilman Robert Farrell to have a ballot measure drafted that would impose a special tax on residents in some parts of South Los Angeles to pay for 300 more police officers. It is estimated that the tax could cost the average homeowner $11.

Two Latino business organizations Monday endorsed the campaign of three Los Angeles-area community groups to increase California's minimum wage from $3.35 to $5.01 an hour. George Sotelo of the 750-member Mexican Chamber of Commerce and Ruben Jauregui, president of the 450-member Latin Business Assn., appeared at an Eastside news conference staged by the United Neighborhoods Organization, the South-Central Organizing Committee and the East Valleys Organization to push for the increase.

A Mack Truck franchise that wants to locate in the Compton Auto Plaza will get a second chance to present its case before the Compton City Council on Tuesday. The council agreed this week, on a motion by Councilwoman Bernice Woods, to let Universal Mack Sales and Services make a new offer for the approximately 12 acres it wants to buy in the plaza, which is located alongside the Artesia (91) Freeway. On a 3-2 vote last week, the council turned down a $3.

Los Angeles-area activists campaigning for a major increase in the minimum wage claimed a second corporate ally Thursday when The Boys Markets Inc. announced that it supports a "substantial increase" in the $3.35-an-hour standard. The Ralphs grocery chain issued a similar statement last week.

A proposal to put a townhouse development in the Compton Auto Plaza was rejected on a 5-0 vote Tuesday by the City Council after the Redevelopment Agency recommended against the project. For months, the South Central Organizing Committee (SCOC), a political activist group organized around local churches, has been pressing the council to give it approximately 13 acres in the auto plaza so it could build 600 townhouses to sell to low-income working families for as little as $69,000.

It was ballyhooed as a conciliatory event. Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell would join some of the fiercest critics of his police tax plan on Thursday at a City Hall press conference, presumably to bury the controversy over Proposition 7.

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, commenting on the volatile issue of police deployment, said the Police Department has been overly generous in assigning officers to South-Central Los Angeles. If there has been an error, Gates told a meeting of Hollywood neighborhood groups Tuesday night, it has been in "deploying a greater balance" to South-Central Los Angeles.

In the first test of a city law restricting the spread of liquor stores in residential areas, the Los Angeles City Council rejected on Tuesday the appeal of a Watts pharmacist seeking to sell alcoholic beverages from his community drugstore. The pharmacist, Walter T. Prevost, had sought to overturn Planning Commission denial of a conditional-use permit that would have allowed him to seek a state liquor license.

An alliance of high-pressure activists, campaigning for a major increase in the $3.35-an-hour minimum wage, descended on a Denny's restaurant in the Mid-Wilshire area Saturday and this time, at least, added cream and sugar to their arsenal of persuasion. They drank coffee. As about 150 protesters rallied and picketed outside the restaurant at 6th Street and Vermont Avenue, scores of their brethren crowded inside, ordering java and nothing but. "They're having a minimum-wage meal. . . .