Police Explanations Challenged : Concern for Stranded Motorists Expressed

Before he became a San Diego city councilman in 1981, Ed Struiksma spent nine years as a San Diego police officer. He might have disagreed with some of the Police Department’s command decisions while he was in uniform, but he was never one to challenge them publicly.

But on Wednesday, Struiksma did just that, calling to task his old boss, Police Chief William B. Kolender, over Kolender’s insistence that the city’s finest are doing all they can to assist stranded motorists.

“I know you don’t share my opinion on the matter,” a terse Struiksma told Kolender during a morning meeting of the City Council’s Public Services and Safety Committee. “But from where I sit, I believe that there’s been a breakdown in the policy . . . it appears to me there’s been a number of people who should have received help and who did not.”

At Struiksma’s urging, the council committee directed the city manager’s office to prepare a report that Struiksma hopes will establish punitive guidelines “that may be necessary if some officers continue not to provide attention to motorists who need help.”

The report, expected to be completed in two weeks, also will explore the possibility of using the Police Department’s 31 community service officers to patrol freeways in search of motorists in distress. The unarmed service officers are now assigned to such duties as taking offense reports and writing parking tickets.

The issue of stranded motorists’ safety came to light last week, when a 27-year-old woman told the San Diego Tribune that her car broke down on Interstate 5, and that over the next four hours, police, sheriff’s and California Highway Patrol cruisers passed by without stopping. The woman eventually accepted a ride from a passer-by who raped her at gunpoint, she said.

Her story brought complaints from other motorists who claimed that they, too, had been ignored by passing officers when their cars became stalled on the city’s freeways.

Kolender declined to comment on Struiksma’s remarks during Wednesday’s meeting, which the chief attended so that he could outline San Diego’s crime statistics from 1984.

“Without being defensive, I’ll wait two weeks to give you the information you’ve requested and I’ll leave it at that,” Kolender told the committee. He could not be reached for comment afterward.

However, Struiksma said he met with Kolender earlier Wednesday and that the chief had insisted that the Police Department already was providing stranded motorists an “adequate level of service.”

“But, in light of recent stories in the newspaper and subsequent calls I’ve received, that’s not the case,” Struiksma said. “If our officers can go out on the freeway traveling to and from the station, or their beats, and while on that freeway can write people tickets, why can’t they stop and render aid?

“Even if they are going from one point to another on an emergency radio call, it’s so simple to reach over and pick up the radio and get a unit there to help. I know. I’ve done it.”

San Diego County officials are considering installing call boxes along the county’s 283 miles of freeway to improve motorist safety. At a cost of $5 million, the boxes would be spaced half a mile apart on urban freeways and one mile apart in rural areas.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to review the proposal Tuesday.