Sacramento Neighborhoods Beef Up Security At Own Expense
Safety is a growing concern in the Sacramento area simply because the number of thugs and scumbags out number police. JoeSacramento has a great post on the thuggery in Natomas. The SacBee has a great article outlining how citizens and neighborhoods are paying for their own security.
Here is the article:
Published: Thursday, Dec. 04, 2008 | Page 1B“You may start with a nice neighborhood,” Martinez said. “But if nobody does anything when the window is broken, the level of crime will escalate. You must nip it in the bud and let people know these things won’t be tolerated.”
Martinez is a big believer in the broken window theory, a concept that says if a window is left broken, people will perceive that nobody cares and nobody is in charge.
Times are hard all over, and it’s making things easier for crooks.
Lean budgets have prompted Sacramento city officials to cut the Police Department budget by 8 percent, and the county has made cuts in probation and other programs aimed at keeping offenders off the streets.
Some neighborhoods aren’t willing to sit back and hope for the best. Here’s how three of them are augmenting police services:
Sierra Oaks pays off-duty cops
Compared with other neighborhoods, there’s not much crime in Sierra Oaks, where houses range from $400,000 to more than $1 million.
Still, about a month ago, the enclave off Fair Oaks Boulevard hired off-duty Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies.
“We live in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Sacramento and want to keep it that way,” said Thomas Dodson, homeowners association president.
Crime in Sierra Oaks is mostly limited to property – the bicycle taken from a garage or a laptop stolen from a car. Another problem this time of year involves thieves swiping delivered packages off porches.
One portion of the neighborhood is in Sacramento and the other part in the unincorporated county. City police and county deputies patrol their respective jurisdictions within Sierra Oaks.
The neighborhood once employed a private patrol company for $2,000 a month. The off-duty deputies cost about $4,000 a month, financed through homeowners association dues. About 500 of the 1,200 homeowners belong to the association.
“We have doubled our financial investment, but I think we have more than doubled our crime fighting,” said Dodson. “Our goal is to expand patrols.”
The deputies work through the Sheriff’s Department’s off-duty program. They come with street smarts and computer-equipped squad cars.
“They can make arrests, they can make stops,”said Dodson. “They will just pull up to somebody who doesn’t look quite right and say, ‘How you doin’?’ ”
Residents chose the days and times they wanted the extra patrols. Sierra Oaks committed to five four-hour shifts a week at varying times.
Dodson said squad cars are more noticeable these days:
“I got an e-mail from a deputy last night that said he drove 45 miles during his four-hour shift,” said Dodson. “He probably passed my house four times.”
Natomas Park hires security
To stem crime, the homeowners association for the sprawling, 8-year-old Natomas Park development hired Paladin Security. The community has endured robberies, shootings and home invasions.
“It is working phenomenally,” said Robert Thompson, homeowners association president.
The officers carry pistols and Tasers.
Several years ago, the homeowners association contacted city police but learned the department had no program for off-duty neighborhood patrols.
That could change.
Police Chief Rick Braziel said “he would be very supportive if a neighborhood association approached us to go into a contract to provide these services,” said Officer Konrad Von Schoech, police spokesman.
Thompson said Natomas Park is the largest homeowners association in Northern California: 4,000 homes with 14,000 residents.
Homeowners’ dues pay for the patrol. Dues, which include a management service, well-equipped clubhouse and the 24-hour security, cost homeowners $69 a month.
“Providing safety is at the top of the list for us,” said Thompson. “The basic tenet of the homeowners association is to preserve the property values. Nothing affects property value like crime.”
River Park relies on patrol
In River Park, one of the city’s safest neighborhoods, 40 men and women carry nothing more lethal than a portable spotlight.
Volunteers of the River Park Neighborhood Watch night patrol have shone a light on a potential thief who had shimmied under a vehicle for its catalytic converter.
They have scared off a stranger poking around a remodeled home in the neighborhood of 1,700 households near California State University, Sacramento.
The tree-lined streets are not immune to crime. One recent morning, a gardner’s leaf blower was lifted from his truck while he worked.
And the most shocking crime of recent memory occurred just this summer.
On Aug. 19, a girl in her late teens was walking near the neighborhood’s Glen Hall Park about 1 p.m. when a man forced her into the women’s restroom and sexually assaulted her, police said. The suspect remains at large.
The patrol operates in River Park from Memorial Day through Labor Day, a stretch that parallels the busiest time for Glen Hall Park, next to the levee at the American River’s Paradise Beach area.
“You do get people who arrive in the afternoon and don’t leave until late at night,” said patrol coordinator Billy Martinez, a physical therapist.
“Often they are drunk or stoned.”
The volunteers, traveling in pairs, pay for their own gas during two-hour shifts from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.
Every time volunteers start to patrol, they call the Police Department and give dispatchers their names and the type of car they are driving. That saves time when they call back to report suspicious incidents.
They make no arrests.
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