Cops and Neighbors : Santa Paula: Eighteen of the community’s 29 officers live there. It’s the chief’s hometown. Some persistent gang problems haven’t marred the familiarity between the force and the townsfolk.

In an age when police officers are anonymous faces in black-and-white cruisers, the cops of Santa Paula are as familiar to townspeople as the hourly clang of the tower bell at the Oddfellows Hall on Main Street.

“You going to take care of my daughter?” asks waitress Johnnie Britton as Cmdr. Bob Gonzales squeezes his large frame into a booth at the Chili Hut.

Britton’s daughter--and Gonzales’--will join 70 other Santa Paula eighth-graders this week on a trip for honor students to Washington, D.C.

“I can trust her with him along,” Britton said later. “A lot of people really like Bobby Gonzales. My nephew was in a little trouble and Bobby handled that very calmly and made us feel good about the situation.”

Gonzales, 40, a former junior college football All-American and a school board member, may be the most public and popular figure on the small Santa Paula Police Department. But he is typical of its 29 officers in many ways.

Gonzales is one of 18 officers who both live and work in the bucolic community of 25,000 people. Most officers are graduates of stately Santa Paula High School. And several, including Police Chief Walter Adair and his two top assistants, were born in the community.

“If you live here, get your hair cut here and see your neighbors when you buy groceries on Saturday morning--that makes a real difference in the way you approach the community,” said Adair, 48. “And people tend to treat us as human beings.”

Though plagued by persistent youth-gang problems, Santa Paula remains a slice of small-town Americana. Conversations are sprinkled with references to high-school friendships and incidents from decades past.

The town’s cops and criminals know each other by name and by deed. And in many cases, neither side seems to hold it against the other.

As Gonzales left the Chili Hut after a Burley Burger lunch, a shirt-less young man whose arm bore the emblem of a prison gang grabbed the officer’s hand and pumped it.

“I did his mom’s lawn. I had a gardening business on the side,” Gonzales says. “People I’ve put in prison have come to my door late at night wanting to talk about a family problem.”

The commander’s lunchtime stroll is punctuated by honks and hellos from passing cars, nods and smiles from shopkeepers and their customers. Along picturesque Main Street, a favorite backdrop for motion-picture companies, Gonzales passes Mick’s Newstand, Vince’s Coffee Shop, Jay Hight Radio & TV and Cauch’s drug store.

“In Santa Paula, the old days are still here,” Gonzales says. “That’s the advantage of living here. You are somebody. In a big city, you’re just a number.”

Sgt. George Brink, 41, is a big, square-jawed guy with Popeye arms, thin waist and flat-top haircut.

He holds a world weightlifting record. And he is admired for helping a mentally handicapped youngster who lifts weights competitively.

Brink, whose great-grandparents came to Santa Paula 60 years ago, is the force’s utility man. He runs the Neighborhood Watch, crossing guard and dog catcher programs. He oversees police car maintenance.

And, as the department’s youth-gang specialist, he has been very busy since 1988, when some Latino youngsters began to shoot at each other with regularity. About 100 photographs of teen-agers are stapled in neat rows above Brink’s desk.

During a particularly violent period in 1989-90, Santa Paula gang members wounded a Ventura High School freshman on campus and stabbed a Santa Paula youth at a Fourth of July picnic. A 15-year-old boy was also wounded in a drive-by assault, and a Santa Paula man shot and killed his next-door neighbor in an argument about their gang-member sons. Houses and cars have been peppered with gunfire.

However, tensions have generally eased since 10 Santa Paula gang leaders were jailed last year, Brink said.

And even in gang activity, Santa Paula’s small-town nature shines through. Shootings are rarely random. So far, only gang members have been victims in the drive-by assaults.

The impact of gangs can be seen in crime reports, Brink said. Indeed, when Santa Paula crime rose 27% in 1989 from the previous year, Chief Adair said the increase was due to thefts by gangs and drug users.

Reported crime dropped 3.5% last year, leaving Santa Paula’s crime rate well below state and national averages but above most other cities in low-crime Ventura County.

Gangs are the last thing on the minds of residents as they stroll evenings beneath the giant camphor trees of Santa Paula Street, admiring 100-year-old Victorian houses and well-kept California bungalows.

Santa Paula Street is the promenade where city leaders power-walk, college students renew old acquaintances and families come on foot and bike to bask in the warmth of the evening.

“Brink!” says Erendira McCormick, 32, who is walking with her sister. The sergeant, cruising the street, waves his thick arm and turns up the hill toward his old high school.

“I’ve never had any contact with the police, but you just know them,” says McCormick, a lifelong resident. But once when she was a child, McCormick recalls, kids were roughing her up and “Bob Gonzales came to my house and told the girls they had better leave me alone.”

Legal secretary Cheryl Armstrong, walking quickly for exercise, has lived in Santa Paula all her life. She recalls phoning the police just once, when her 14-year-old daughter refused to go to school last year.

“A woman officer spent a half an hour talking with my daughter,” Armstrong says. “I thought that was thoughtful and refreshing.” Her daughter went to class.

Donna Schulze, a 16-year resident who has stopped for a chat with an old friend, recalls how her twin 16-year-old sons snuck out of their house at 2 a.m. years ago, only to be rounded up by Adair.

“He brought them back to my doorstep and said, ‘I want you to know that I’ve advised them that it’s not a good idea to run from the police.’ He left it at that. I thought that was nice.”

Santa Paula police do have critics. “They shove you and stuff,” says a 22-year-old former gang member whose arm sports a tattoo of a long-haired woman. But he has kind words for the gang unit chief. “Brink is cool. He got out of his car a couple of times and joked around on the sidewalk.”

Manuel Arana, 22, out for an evening stroll, is less generous: “Ask any place you see a Mexican, and they will tell you they get hassled a lot.” But Arana says that white officers, who still make up two-thirds of the department, are no more inclined to harass than are the Latino patrolmen.

Victor Salas Jr., a Santa Paula attorney who has defended Latino youths, is familiar with the complaints but thinks that the department is generally a very good one. It could not get away with the kind of brutality alleged against big-city forces after the Rodney King beating, he said.

“I have never had a case in this town where the officer really beat a guy senseless,” Salas said. “If they get out of hand, it’s going to come back to haunt them. They wouldn’t get the cooperation they need to do their jobs.”

Adair said his department has been sued once in 15 years for alleged excessive force, and won that case. The family of a man who died in jail last year of a narcotics overdose has filed a legal claim with the city, but not a lawsuit, he said.

The department received eight complaints last year, but not one for brutality, while responding to 20,000 calls, Adair said.

For baby-faced patrolman Greg Guilin, 26, the Tuesday evening shift had been a little slow, which is not uncommon for a weeknight.

He had rolled on calls of a bike theft, a torn screen, an abandoned child, a family spat and a mental patient gone berserk.

Now, at 9 p.m., seven hours into his shift, the radio crackles with a report of a hubcap thief at Gould Ford. But the only activity Guilin spots is another police cruiser and Adair in his unmarked car.

“I was out and heard the call,” Adair explains.

Guilin raises his voice only once all evening. Men are drinking beer and playing music on a sidewalk near their apartment. They say the U.S. Constitution gives them that right. Guilin disagrees.

“You run into a lot of people you went to school with, and you end up arresting them,” he says. “I’d rather arrest someone else.”

Guilin says he does not want to leave Santa Paula any time soon. He likes the fact that he has been on the force for nearly three years and has never been shot at.

“This is not like L.A.,” he says. “I’ve got a wife and a kid and a dog and a cat--the whole thing. All I need now is a goldfish.”