1-Man Patrols Credited With Cutting Crime

Like most of his neighbors, Jim Byerly moved to Agoura Hills for peace and quiet. Especially peace.

“Security is one of the things I was looking for when I came here,” says Byerly. “I would not live in the San Fernando Valley. I wouldn’t feel comfortable there.”

So new statistics showing that residential burglaries are down 40% this year in his bedroom community are of special comfort to Byerly, a 33-year-old managing director of an electronics company.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials say the dramatic drop is part of an overall 20% decrease in major crime resulting from the experimental nighttime use of single-deputy patrol cars in Agoura Hills.

Officials eliminated two-man patrols in the city of 20,000 last December, reassigning the second deputies to patrol cars of their own. The move immediately doubled the number of black-and-white squad cars on city streets during evening and early-morning hours.

Radio Cars Cruise City

“Now the bad guys get off the freeway and see radio cars passing each other and cruising through parking lots and alleys,” said Deputy James Bitetto, who is one of the solo patrolmen.

“They think there are cops all over the place. So they get back on the freeway and just keep going.”

When suspicious persons are stopped, deputies use their radio to call for backup officers. “It’s very intimidating when you pull up with two radio cars behind you. The bad guys feel the whole world’s focused on them,” Bitetto said.

One-man police units are not new. But neither is their nighttime deployment common. Because two officers can support each other in an emergency, the Los Angeles Police Department only uses one-officer units in scattered areas of the city, a spokesman said. Sheriff’s officials said several of the 36 small cities that, like Agoura Hills, contract with the sheriff for protection deploy one-man cars.

1-Man Cars Called Unsafe

One-man cars are controversial among many police officials and police union leaders, who contend that such deployment is unsafe.

Los Angeles Police dispatchers were ordered not to send one-man units alone on potentially dangerous calls after a lone officer was shot twice in the back in 1982 when he answered a domestic disturbance call in North Hollywood. In 1980, a San Fernando Police Department officer who was patrolling alone at 4 a.m. was shot to death by a robbery suspect.

Bitetto said he feels confident about one-man night patrols in Agoura Hills, although he said his fiancee remains “apprehensive” about it.

According to sheriff’s statistics, however, Agoura Hills is one of the safest places for deputies to be on their own.

Hills that surround the eight-square-mile city restrict access by outsiders to just three entry points. In town, a single, easy-to-patrol roadway connects most neighborhoods. High-intensity street lights are so numerous on residential streets that most homeowners could read a newspaper in their front yards at midnight.

Cross Town in 4 Minutes

In emergencies, deputies say they can race from one side of town to the other in only four minutes.

But emergencies are few and far between, according to Agoura Hills’ crime statistics.

No one has ever been murdered within the city limits. During the first half of this year, no one was raped. Only six people were robbed.

Along with the 40% drop in residential burglaries, break-ins at stores and offices were down 29% and thefts from automobiles dipped by 58%. Counting everything from stolen car-stereo tapes to husband-and-wife fights, there were only 272 crimes reported in the city during the first six months of this year.

“There is so little crime that no obvious crime patterns have developed,” said Capt. Mark Squiers, commander of the sheriff’s Malibu station and in effect the “police chief” of Agoura Hills. He said it is obvious to him that the one-man patrol car program is responsible for the lowered crime rate, however.

Increases Visibility

“You can see the dividends from the increased visibility. Instead of having one patrol car out there at night, we now have three,” he said. Squiers said the city’s one-man, radar-equipped traffic car is also used now as a backup unit.

Agoura Hills officials say the cost of gas and oil for the extra car has added about $60,000 to the $1.1 million a year the city pays the county.

But, in a roundabout way, the lowered crime rate is even helping offset that expense.

The city received $23,346 last year from court fines stemming from traffic and parking violations and municipal code infractions.

With fewer crimes to investigate, deputies have had more time this year to write tickets. One category of moving violations is up 42%, and the number of parking tickets has increased by 38%, which will bring in more money to the city. How much has not been reckoned yet.

Predictably, that has led to some complaints.

Seventeen-year-old Kevin Lowe had a dejected look as he sat in his car and fingered the speeding ticket he received from a deputy who clocked him traveling 40 m.p.h. on a residential street with a 25-m.p.h. speed limit.

“I think there are too many sheriffs out here,” Lowe grumbled.