A Few Bad Avocados : Sheriff’s Department Aims New Anti-Theft Program at Produce Rustlers

Here in this emerald valley, where farming is king and lawmen are in short supply, the lure of a fast buck often is too hard to resist.

Bandits regularly raid the greenbelts of the Santa Clara Valley that link Santa Paula to Fillmore to Piru, pulling about $1 million worth of fruit and farm products from the orchards that form the backbone of Ventura County’s $1-billion agriculture industry.

The problem is worse than ever, police say. But now the victims are fighting back.

The Sheriff’s Department has started a Rural Crime Prevention Program aimed at foiling those who prey on the county’s farmers and cattle ranchers.

For the first time ever, a deputy has been assigned full time to head the effort, which involves a neighborhood watch approach to preventing fruit and cattle theft. And it employs a program, already in use by area avocado growers, that jails rustlers who rip off farmers and rewards tipsters who turn them in.

“We’re not talking about people who just stop off on the roadside and pick whatever they can consume that day,” says Rex Laird, executive director of the county Farm Bureau. “We’re talking about organized crime.”

Agricultural theft is as old as the county’s tree-studded valleys that last year produced the 11th-largest crop in the state.

Rustlers poach cattle or butcher them on the range, leaving just skin and bones behind. Thieves steal tractors, pesticides and aluminum pipe for resale on the black market.

And organized strike teams continue to wipe out whole sections of orchards, using nightfall and the trees themselves to shield their illegal activity. Farmers fence their property, but bandits cut their way through. Farmers offer rewards, but few people call to collect.

“It used to be that law enforcement focused so much on violent crime that farm crime was overshadowed,” says Taurino Almazan, a sheriff’s deputy who patrols the groves near Fillmore. “But not anymore. It’s to the point where these people are losing so much money that something needs to be done.”

Almazan is pushing his patrol car up narrow back roads bordered by fruit trees on both sides.

“This here is a favorite,” Almazan says as the car’s tires crunch to a stop at the edge of an avocado grove. “This place was hit a few weeks ago.”

The soft shoulder is creased with the deep tire tracks of a getaway truck probably outfitted with heavy-duty shock absorbers to support the weight of illegal booty.

As in most raids, according to Almazan, pickers were dropped off at night and loaded sack after sack with all the fruit they could reach. Although the property was fenced and posted with a sign offering a $500 reward for the capture of avocado thieves, the robbers pulled up the chain-link and pushed the bags underneath.

The truck returned, the fruit was loaded and nobody saw a thing. The robbers have not been caught.

“If you’re a crook and you look down and see this,” Almazan says, turning toward the green valley, “you’d have to believe that money does grow on trees.”

Farmers statewide lose $20 million each year to theft. No one knows for sure the losses suffered by Ventura County farmers. The district attorney’s office prosecuted 36 fruit thieves last year.

The crime prevention program will track agricultural theft and paint an accurate picture of the problem, says Gary White, the deputy heading the program. A lot of that crime goes unreported, he says, often because farmers feel nothing can be done.

White will issue identification numbers to groves and ranches, making them easier for deputies to find in case of trouble. He will carve ID numbers into farm equipment in case it is stolen. And he will ask to be informed of suspicious activity in the area.

“We want the growers and ranchers to become harder targets for the criminals,” White says.

Because they were hit early and often, avocado growers have led the assault on rural crime.

When groves were being badly plundered a few years ago, the California Avocado Commission spent $743,000 to mount its first statewide anti-theft program. Ventura County sheriff’s deputies used about $50,000 of that money for extra patrols. The county harvested $35 million worth of avocados last year, the second-highest yield in California.

From November, 1991, to April, 1992, county growers reported 10 thefts for a loss of 3,600 pounds of the pear-shaped fruit. Area growers report at least another 3,000 pounds stolen since April. Only San Diego County produced more avocados and suffered more losses.

Statewide, growers reported 71,000 pounds stolen last year.

“I don’t think there was any awareness of the avocado issue until we started making it public,” says Bob Tobias, an east Ventura grower who chairs the avocado commission. “I think we were the first commodity to really put some money behind these programs.”

One of the programs, a reward system for the capture and conviction of avocado rustlers, made Jorge Robles $800 richer.

Robles is the foreman at a Fillmore avocado ranch hit on back-to-back nights by rustlers. He maintained nightly vigils to protect the crop and waited for the robbers to slip up.

“I waited for those rats, I knew they would be back,” Robles says of the two-man team that pilfered hundreds of pounds of avocados.

Robles called sheriff’s deputies, who sealed off all possible exits. He then waited for the bandits to drive by, stepped outside of his house and pointed at their fruit-laden Jeep.

Deputies arrested the duo. The avocados were impounded and sold.

Farmer Chris Taylor knows the sinking feeling of walking into a grove and finding nothing but stems where fruit should be.

Taylor is president of the county Farm Bureau and has tended the family farm near Santa Paula for a couple of decades. He is also vice president of farming for Limoneira Co., one of the area’s largest producers of avocados and citrus.

Bandits ripped off more than 2,000 pounds of avocados from Limoneira a few months ago. That crime also remains unsolved.

Taylor says the best thing about the new Sheriff’s Department program is that it helps growers help themselves and each other.

“A lot of things happen out in the country that didn’t used to happen,” he says. “We need to stick together. Things aren’t what they used to be.”