Report Says Oxnard Police Need More Officers

In sharp disagreement with an earlier study calling for major cuts in Oxnard’s Police Department, a consultant’s report released Tuesday urged that the department beef up its ranks.

The report also urged that the city increase its police budget so officers could have more time for investigations and crime prevention.

The recommendations by Virginia-based Carroll Buracker & Associates came as an apparent surprise to some Oxnard City Council members, who had already approved $500,000 worth of cuts from the police budget in the next two years in an effort to reduce a city deficit that totals $1.1 million in the present fiscal year.

The City Council hired the consultant to identify those Police Department cuts after Police Chief Robert P. Owens objected to cuts proposed in an earlier study of citywide budget reductions.

Mayor Nao Takasugi, commenting on the new report, said: “I’m not sure how many of these recommendations we can afford to implement this year, but if we can afford it, I’m for it. This confirms my feeling that our Police Department is lean and mean.”

Takasugi said it was too soon, however, to say how additional police funding might be arranged. The city is dipping into its reserve funds in an effort to reduce the deficit.

“I want to read the report,” Councilwoman Geraldine W. Furr said. “Naturally, I’m for doing whatever we can for the police, but I want to study the specifics before making any decisions.”

The council voted to have city staff members review the report before deciding what action to take.

The study calls for hiring 34 new police officers in the next two years and making other improvements in the department that would cost more than $2 million annually.

Such actions would reverse reductions suggested late last year by a Washington consulting firm that urged $5.3 million in across-the-board cuts citywide over the next two years.

“The city of Oxnard has one of the best police departments in the United States,” the Buracker report said.

Among other things, the study praised the department’s community-oriented policing, which Owens said has helped keep a lid on crime in the county’s largest city.

But the department is seriously understaffed, the study said. “In comparison with 18 jurisdictions in California with a population of 100,000 to 150,000, Oxnard ranked 18th in terms of sworn personnel per 1,000 population and 15th in total employees per 1,000,” the report said.

The study said the Oxnard department spends less per position than the county’s next four largest cities--$62,503 per officer in Oxnard contrasted with between $69,400 and $82,439 in Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Camarillo.

“Your dispatching and record-keeping operations are still being done manually,” Carroll Buracker, a former police chief of Fairfax County, Va., told the council. “This cuts down on crime-fighting efficiency.

“It also has led to a high attrition rate among Oxnard’s police dispatchers, who are stressed because they have to decide where each car should be sent.” Most modern departments dispatch cars by computer, Buracker said.

Buracker said the personnel shortage is so severe that detectives do not work evenings and narcotics officers do not work weekends.

“The civilian staff is so short that there is a nine-year backlog in microfilming,” he said.

“The Oxnard chief doesn’t even have a secretary,” he added.

Buracker urged the council to restore 10 unfilled positions in the current fiscal year and add another 27 officers in the year beginning July 1, 1992. The force now totals less than 140.

Despite the lack of resources, Buracker praised the department for “doing a good job of keeping indexed crimes down,” including murder, assault, rape and other felonies tracked in federal crime studies.

Owens said the Buracker report was gratifying, “especially in view of the consulting group’s high credentials.”

Owens said he believed that there was “a clear contrast” between the favorable rating his department received from Buracker and the criticism of Los Angeles police and Chief Daryl F. Gates by the Christopher Commission.