OXNARD : City to Study Police Response Times

The Oxnard City Council has directed its staff to look into allegations by a committee of La Colonia-area business operators who say that city police often do not respond to emergency calls in the low-income neighborhood for up to an hour, if at all.

“It really discourages the business people in that area when they (police) don’t come at all,” Carlos Monroy, who owns La Bodega on Colonia Road, told the City Council on Tuesday. “We all pay our taxes.”

Rosa Michel, president of the 23-member United Colonia Business Committee, recalled one incident in which two men coming out of a store were beaten by a group of youths hanging around a public telephone. She said she called police, but they took an hour to arrive.

Michel also asked the council to see if the city could arrange for the removal of public phones in the Colonia Road business area because they attract drug peddlers and loiterers.

“It’s so obvious, anybody can go down there and see it,” Monroy said.

Assistant Police Chief James Latimer said Wednesday that he was surprised to hear of the complaints. Assaults, he said, are priority calls that should result in a response time of six to seven minutes.

He said a check of similar past complaints revealed that “the most we had was a 12-minute response time. . . . Quite often there’s a misperception of time, a time lag.”