Forging a Bond to Fight Crime : Police: Officers use problem-solving techniques and a friendly approach to make a once-dangerous Oxnard neighborhood safer.

Three years ago, residents of Oxnard’s Aleric Street were afraid to let their children play outside their apartments. Prostitutes turned tricks in abandoned cars. Drug dealers sold their wares in the neighborhood park. And gang members covered the walls with graffiti.

One officer said police responded nightly to reports of beatings and stabbings and robberies.

But a new concept of police work--which relies on officers working closely with the community to attack specific problems--helped Oxnard officers clean up the four-square-block neighborhood in the South Winds area.

“We have gone months without having a robbery,” Oxnard Police Officer Jim Struck said. “It used to be we wouldn’t go a week.”

However, all the problems have not disappeared. A visitor to the neighborhood still sees graffiti on the walls and youths wearing gang colors.

“The best you can say,” Police Chief Robert Owens said, “is it’s a shadow of its former self.”

But the problem-oriented approach, which the department began using in the neighborhood in 1987, has been effective, Owens said.

Indeed, Owens said he soon plans to begin evaluating officers during their biannual reviews on their problem-solving and analytical skills.

“That is the future of law enforcement--the way in which police bond with the community and become part of the problem-solving,” Owens said.

Officers begin by identifying a problem area. Then they take a survey of the neighborhood, asking residents and business owners about their concerns and how they think police can help them.

The approach, which is championed by some departments elsewhere in the country, has been applied to several other neighborhoods in Oxnard, Owens said.

But it is the project on Aleric Street, which cost the department $123,000, that Owens calls a textbook example of problem-oriented police work.

Crime in the low-income neighborhood, where a two-bedroom apartment rents for about $500 a month, became worse and worse for about 15 years, officials said. Traditional police strategies--such as beefing up patrols and running undercover vice operations--failed to conquer the problem because they were used only for a set amount of time. Once normal patrols resumed, so did the crime, Struck said.

“It was notorious for a long, long time,” Owens said. “It almost became a household word because of the problems.”

Eventually, some people concerned about the area complained to the City Council. A task force from city departments was created in 1987 to look into the crime problem in the neighborhood, Owens said.

During a walking tour of the area, Police Department, City Council and Public Works officials saw a prime example of the broken-window phenomenon, Owens said.

“If you have a broken window and it goes unrepaired, it symbolizes a lack of interest and lack of concern,” Owens said.

Dilapidated furniture and refuse were piled high in the alleys. Needles and cocaine wrappers littered the ground. And the apartment buildings were in need of repair.

So the city departments, local businesses, landlords and residents went to work.

The Police Department increased foot patrols so officers could meet neighborhood residents and gain their trust. Graffiti-covered walls were repainted. Bright lights were added to the neighborhood.

Police arrested prostitutes and their customers. And conditions of probation did not allow those convicted to return to the area, Struck said.

Landlords were encouraged to evict drug dealers. Then they put up wrought-iron fences to guard interior courtyards and alleys between buildings so criminals would not have places to hide, Struck said.

Even the street got a new image. The name was changed from Aleric Street to Cuesta del Mar Drive.

Now children play in the streets and families use the park, Struck said. When officers chase criminals, residents point out where they are hiding, he said.

“The nice thing about this is that it solves the problem,” Struck said. “We don’t have to keep coming back to it.”

Sharon Gaiser, who co-owns 18 apartment buildings in the area, said the neighborhood has changed drastically since her brother complained to the City Council about conditions three years ago.

“When I first came down here, you couldn’t walk down the street without a drug dealer tapping you on the shoulder,” Gaiser said. Now, she said, she feels safe in the area at night.

Ramon Martines said he too has seen a difference in the past three years. Martines moved into an apartment in the 500 block of Aleric Street in 1987 so he could work as a maintenance man in some of the apartments.

His wife would not move in, he said. But a year later when the area was safer, she did.