Citizen Crime Patrol’s Tactics Questioned : Moorpark: The semi-secret Graffiti Busters plans to make citizen’s arrests. The Sheriff’s Department foresees liability and safety problems.

Despite opposition from local officials and law enforcement officers, a group of Moorpark residents plans to start patrolling the streets at night to catch graffiti-spraying vandals.

The group, which calls itself the Graffiti Busters, plans to put night patrols on the streets in a few weeks. They will have walkie-talkies, cameras, floodlights and night-vision goggles.

Unlike two similar groups in Ventura County, the Moorpark organization hopes to make citizen’s arrests on occasion. Patrols in Camarillo and Ojai call authorities when they see crimes occur.

Ventura County Sheriff John Gillespie said he foresees problems with any attempt to do police work without the guidance of law enforcement.

“I would discourage it unless they were trained under the auspices of” the Sheriff’s Department, Gillespie said. “It’s legal to make a citizen’s arrest, but it’s also legal to resist. You could see tremendous lawsuits and liability problems.”

State law says a civilian who sees a crime being committed may, like a law enforcement officer, use “reasonable force but not excessive force” to make an arrest, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. James S. Irving said. However, he said, it is sometimes difficult to win a conviction in the absence of evidence beyond the citizen’s testimony.

The head of Graffiti Busters is Steve Brodsky, 43, who owns an electronics company. He said hundreds of volunteers have been recruited since organizing efforts began a month ago. Some are already patrolling Moorpark in their own vehicles, he said.

Brodsky said the group hopes to provide courtroom evidence of crimes in progress by taking photographs and offering eyewitness accounts. He said he will begin the patrols regardless of whether law enforcement officials disapprove.

Although he maintains “we’re not a vigilante group,” it is a semi-secret organization. Brodsky was the only one of six organizers who agreed to be identified by name.

Brodsky said that because of the possibility of retaliation from youth gangs, he has promised to keep names of volunteers anonymous to all but a small number of Graffiti Busters. He has also declined to say what hours the group will work, on the grounds the information would tip off vandals.

The group has divided Moorpark into eight districts, each covered by at least one person in a car. Volunteers will be linked to a base station, which will rotate between private homes. Someone there will call the Sheriff’s Department to report crimes, Brodsky said.

Brodsky maintained that volunteers will be urged to keep a low profile and not to leave their vehicles to investigate crimes. They will be asked to make arrests “only when appropriate” and safe--for example, when there are only one or two suspects, he said.

Brodsky said his group’s effort is needed because of the encroachment of gangs into the Moorpark area.

Crime reports for 1989 indicate that Moorpark is the safest city in the county and the fourth-safest in Southern California, according to FBI statistics. Brodsky contends that is changing.

“Six years ago, a lot of those homes weren’t built, and there was no place to put” graffiti, he said. “I don’t think it’s ever been as bad as it is now.”

Reported vandalism increased in Moorpark by about 18% in 1989 over the previous year. Many of the incidents involved graffiti, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

The size of Graffiti Busters remains secret. Brodsky said he has enough volunteers to provide year-round, daily coverage so that individuals will not be asked to serve more than once every few months.

However, the group has had trouble forging a partnership with law enforcement, despite at least two meetings with the Sheriff’s Department. And the city of Moorpark has not endorsed the group.

“The Sheriff’s Department has nothing to do with the organization at all,” said Lt. Rich Rodriguez, who heads the 15 sheriff’s deputies who patrol Moorpark. “We’re not associated with them in any way, shape or form.”

Rodriguez said he is reluctant to encourage the Sheriff’s Department’s involvement with Graffiti Busters because of the legal liabilities involved. At a recent meeting of Graffiti Busters, Rodriguez encouraged volunteers to work within established neighborhood watch programs.

However, Brodsky said he rejected those programs because they are limited to individual neighborhoods and restrict crime watches to daytime hours when vandals are less likely to operate.

“Most people are asleep when most of this goes on,” Brodsky said.

Civilian patrols operate in Camarillo and Ojai using unarmed volunteers linked by CB radios.

In those cities, groups sponsored by the Sheriff’s Department met requirements set out by the law enforcement agency. Volunteers in both cities are screened, and they take at least 10 hours of Sheriff’s Department training before they are allowed to patrol on their own.

In Camarillo, 20 volunteers in the 15-year-old CB Patrol roam the streets in search of crime in the daytime and late evening.

In Ojai, a 38-member Senior Volunteer Patrol has been operating for nine years, patrolling primarily during the day from a base at the Sheriff’s Department. A used patrol car was donated to the group when it started.

Authorities required the groups in Camarillo and in Ojai to adopt written procedures for reporting crimes, a code of conduct and a process for screening volunteers.

The patrols must carry identification badges and limit their activities to non-confrontational duties. Violation of the patrols’ strict code of conduct is grounds for expulsion.

When volunteers see crimes committed or evidence of a crime, they report to a base station by car radio. Another volunteer then conveys the information to a Sheriff’s Department dispatcher.

Although the group does not keep statistics on the number of arrests attributed to the patrols, volunteers have been known to stop burglaries in progress just by their presence, authorities said.

Officials in Ojai report that volunteers report at least three incidents each month where they have discovered evidence of break-ins or other crimes that require the Sheriff’s Department’s investigators.

Carol Gillespie, a senior center director who helped start the Senior Volunteer Patrol in Ojai, said the city’s civilian patrols have gained a reputation as a model program by state law enforcement officials.

She said part of the group’s effectiveness is the training not to intervene but only to observe and report crimes in progress.

“These people are 80 to 90 years old. They’re not going to have a knock down drag out,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Rod Thompson said. “They’re much more valuable as witnesses.”

In addition to anti-crime efforts, Ojai’s patrol has provided traffic control for special events that would normally have to be provided by the city.

“Because we’re a small town we just don’t have the manpower and person power,” Ojai City Manager Andrew Belknap said. “It translates into some tangible benefits for the community.”

In contrast, Moorpark’s Graffiti Busters has yet to adopt a set of bylaws. Graffiti Busters requires that a new volunteer spend a shift with a deputy, Brodsky said.

Moorpark’s Lt. Rodriguez said he sees problems in the group’s lack of structure. Although he has agreed to allow ride-alongs for the volunteers, he said he would like the group to tighten its procedures on reporting and conduct.

Rodriguez said he worries that overzealous volunteers might injure themselves or others. They could be in danger if they try to take photographs or make citizen’s arrests, he said.

“We don’t want to have a vigilante type of situation,” Rodriguez said. “It could easily escalate to that.”

Other Moorpark officials are also unenthusiastic.

Mayor Bernardo Perez said he supports community efforts to suppress vandalism and burglaries but is opposed to what he termed a “heavy-handed authoritarian approach” to eliminating Moorpark’s graffiti problem.

Perez said he favors programs that provide nighttime activities designed to keep youths off the streets.

The mayor said the approach by Graffiti Busters might actually encourage rebellious teen-agers to spray more graffiti on walls as a challenge to the volunteer patrol, escalating the vandalism that volunteers hope to reduce.

“It personally dismays me that they’re taking that approach,” Perez said.

Councilman Paul Lawrason said he wonders whether the group can ensure its members’ safety.

“I’ve been out there with the police enough times to know it’s not friendly,” Lawrason said. “I think they need to look at the security aspect of it.”

Brodsky said he and his volunteers remain optimistic about launching patrols within the month, even if all details are not ironed out with the Sheriff’s Department.

“We’re going full steam ahead on this,” he said. “Gangs feel they’re in control. . . . I won’t stand for it. I’m not going to stand there and let it happen to me.”