Anti-Gang Plan OKd for Oxnard

Oxnard agreed Tuesday to become the national demonstration site for an anti-gang program sponsored by the federal Department of Justice.

Under a $74,000 federal contract approved by the City Council, the Oxnard Police Department will operate a computer that will file photographs as well as physical descriptions, criminal backgrounds and gang affiliations of suspects.

The program will be based on an information-sharing system that few police departments in the country use, David Keith, crime analyst at the Police Department, said.

“Most departments have gang units that handle 100% of the cases related to gangs. We follow a different approach. We share our information throughout the department so that every single patrol officer and detective knows who the gang members are and what crimes they have committed,” he said.

Instead of a gang unit, Oxnard’s Police Department will form a gang steering committee of officers who will incorporate their anti-gang efforts into their regularly assigned duties. The committee will be chaired by a police sergeant and will include a crime analyst, the school liaison officer and several patrol officers.

Under the program, the Police Department will add a gang analyst to its crime analysis staff and a gang case manager who will work in the Ventura County district attorney’s office.

The department will accumulate as much information as possible on gang members so that if arrested the chances of convicting them will be greater, Keith said.

“This program is not meant to terrorize gang members, but to place steady, relentless pressure on them,” Oxnard Police Chief Robert P. Owens said.

Oxnard was chosen to serve as a model program by the Justice Department because in 1983 it successfully piloted a serious habitual offender tracking program, Keith said. The gang program will be modeled after the habitual offender program, he said.

While Oxnard has been plagued by gang problems for generations, Owens said, the city’s gang activities are not more serious than in most other cities its size.

“We don’t have highly structured gangs, just loose affiliations,” Owens said. “The gangs are more turf-oriented than crime-oriented, and even though there is some drug dealing involved, they are not heavily into it like they are in Los Angeles and other major cities.”

Keith said that until now, Oxnard has not kept statistics on gang activity. He estimates that about 500 youths belong to gangs, though only a few dozen are hard-core criminals.

The gang computer program was designed by Monterrey Systems Inc., a Montecito-based software company. It was installed in the department two weeks ago and since then more than 150 names have been fed into the system, Keith said.

The federal contract will expire in November, but if successful Oxnard will probably reapply for federal money to keep it afloat, officials said.