Vista, San Marcos Consider Own Police Forces

Once again, two North County cities are looking into cutting their ties to the Sheriff’s Department and establishing their own police departments.

In the past 10 years, Vista and San Marcos have repeatedly studied alternatives to contracting with the Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement services. In the past three weeks, the neighboring cities have independently decided to take another look at the idea.

Frustrations from San Marcos’ nearly yearlong attempt to open a sheriff’s substation prompted the City Council last month to direct its staff to study law enforcement options.

The city had purchased and developed a building for a new sheriff’s substation, and the building has been ready for more than six weeks. But San Marcos officials said that county red tape has kept it from opening.

“Somewhere along the line, somebody forgot to dot an ‘i,’ ” City Councilman Finies (Corky) Smith said.

A sheriff’s official could not be reached to discuss the San Marcos substation. The substation issue has led even City Council supporters of contracting with the Sheriff’s Department to re-evaluate the relationship.

“As long as we can pick up the phone and get the service we want, we will stick with the contract,” Mayor Lee Thibadeau said. “That isn’t true today, and we have no reason to believe it will get any better tomorrow.”

But start-up costs that Thibadeau estimated at more than $6 million are daunting to a municipality facing tight budgets.

Thibadeau said increased costs of the sheriff’s contract, recent labor difficulties the Sheriff’s Department has had with its dispatchers, and delays in increasing the numbers of patrol units in the city have added to the sentiment that it is time for the city of 40,000 to get a police department of its own.

For Vista, with a population of 75,000, its own law enforcement agency would be a sign the town has grown up, Mayor Gloria McClellan said.

“We have a fire department that is second to none in the whole county,” McClellan said, “I would give anything for a police department like that.”

The Vista City Council earlier this week called for a study of law enforcement options, primarily a city police department.

McClellan said the city wants more control over its law enforcement. She complained that deputies are often rotated just after they have developed a rapport with the community.

“Every time they change over sheriff’s deputies,” McClellan said, “they cause an insecure feeling among the public because they don’t know them. There has got to be a greater connection between the sheriffs and the people in this town.”

Vista residents in 1982 shot down a ballot measure that would have created a city police department, but McClellan said sentiments have changed.

Both San Marcos’ and Vista’s studies are planned to be ready sometime in the spring and would determine the costs of a police department and what levels of service would be needed. The reports would make a comparison of those costs to contracting with the Sheriff’s Department.

Other North County cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Department said they had no plans to open their own departments.

“I enjoy not having the responsibility on a day-to-day basis for a police department,” Poway City Manager Jim Bowersox said. “No operation is perfect, but we have open lines of communication, and we try to solve problems as the occur.”