MOORPARK : Council Votes Down Gang Detail Funds

Moorpark City Council members have clashed over how to prevent what two members believe is a budding gang problem.

Three councilmen refused Monday to add $82,500 to the city’s police budget for a new officer to work on the Sheriff’s Department gang detail, a proposal backed by council members Paul Lawrason and Eloise Brown.

For nearly a month, Moorpark’s approach to its alleged gang problem has divided members of the five-member council.

Some cite last year’s FBI crime statistics, which rank Moorpark as the fourth-safest city in Southern California based on its low crime rate. Sheriff’s officials maintain that Moorpark is relatively free of gang-related crimes. Moorpark, Thousand Oaks and the unincorporated areas around both cities rely on sheriff’s deputies for law enforcement.

But Tuesday, Brown said she firmly believes that a potential gang problem exists and that an additional sheriff’s deputy can prevent it from worsening.

“We need some major community awareness that we don’t have gangs with a capital G, but that youths are vulnerable” to gang recruitment, Brown said. Brown said she believes the council will reconsider when it meets July 11 to determine what it can do to prevent youth gangs.

Moorpark’s proposed 1990-91 budget for police enforcement calls for no new officers, but includes an 18% increase in expenses, Deputy City Manager Richard Hare said. The council is expected to approve the budget as presented when it meets today.

Lt. Joel Oksner, who heads the gang detail based in Thousand Oaks, said Moorpark has one small group of youths who associate with a known gang. Oksner said extra funding, “would ensure that Moorpark got more attention and time” with those youths.

Some council members said that as long as Moorpark’s crime rate is low, they are reluctant to add an extra officer to the force of 14 deputies who already patrol the city’s streets.

“Moorpark was named one of the safest cities in the West,” Moorpark Mayor Bernardo Perez said Tuesday. “How do you balance that reality with the idea we’ve got a gang problem?”

Perez has proposed that prevention of youth gangs be achieved not through stepped-up police enforcement, but with the addition of youth activities and job programs. He said he favors programs such as allowing the old Moorpark High School gym to be used at night by teen-agers.