Not an Open-and-Shut Matter : Victim of Assault and Burglary Tries to Spare Sheriff’s Station From Cutbacks

Fifteen years ago, Brenda Fitzgerald awoke in the middle of the night to find an intruder in the bedroom of her Florida home, pressing a knife to her throat.

She fought back and survived. But the memory of that assault came flooding back, vividly, one night in February when Fitzgerald walked into her San Dimas duplex and realized a burglar was inside.

Shaking, the 42-year-old former hospital administrator dialed 911 from her bedroom and fled outside, where she was met by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, who had pulled up in a patrol car.

“Immediate relief,” was how Fitzgerald said she felt at seeing the deputies. “All of a sudden all these men in green were here to take care of it.”

The deputies searched the premises thoroughly, but the intruder was gone.

Today, Fitzgerald fears that she and others in her city could lose that feeling of security. The San Dimas sheriff’s station would close its public counter under proposed county budget cuts; as a result, San Dimas city officials are considering hiring police from nearby La Verne to patrol the city.

Propelled by the memory of her past assault, Fitzgerald began a one-woman crusade against those plans.

She and four other volunteers have collected more than 12,000 signatures and have plastered city streets with hot-pink flyers protesting the budget cuts.

On Tuesday, Fitzgerald will speak on the issue before the San Dimas City Council. On June 29, she and Mayor Terry L. Dipple will take a busload of residents to a meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which is considering the budget.

Although she calls herself “politically naive” and says she can’t get through a speech without stuttering, Fitzgerald says the thought of losing the sheriff’s station emboldens her.

“I’ve never been much in the forefront, but it’s easy for me now because I feel so strongly,” she said.

With 34,000 residents, San Dimas pays $3.4 million annually for 23 sheriff’s deputies who patrol city streets from a small, brown-brick station on San Dimas Avenue.

But in January, the station began closing its doors to the public between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. as a Sheriff’s Department cost-cutting measure.

Concerned city officials began talking to police in La Verne, who are willing to expand their force to provide patrols in San Dimas and 24-hour public access at a site to be determined.

The need for 24-hour access took on renewed urgency in April after 37-year-old Tina Kirschbaum banged on the closed sheriff’s station doors at 1 a.m. for protection from suspected carjackers.

A deputy working inside behind closed doors came out. Kirschbaum was not hurt, but she was shaken and upset by the locked doors.

Now, with further budget cuts looming, all public access may soon be eliminated, said Lt. Mike Langgle, station commander. To cut expenses, front counter jobs would be eliminated. But the rest of the 55 employees--deputies, clerks, community relations workers and detectives--would remain at the station, working behind closed doors. They would still respond to telephone calls for help, as well as perform their other law enforcement duties.

“We won’t vacate the station, we will just be closed to the public,” Langgle said.

Under this scenario, the San Dimas City Council would have to decide whether to remain with the Sheriff’s Department, despite the cuts, or switch to La Verne, a procedure that could take up to two years while the neighboring city hires and trains new officers.

For Fitzgerald, that decision has personal reverberations. She said it took her years to recover from the 1978 assault in Florida. The intruder chased her through the house and knocked her down.

“When my head hit the floor, I thought I was going to die,” Fitzgerald recalled.

The man ran off. Fitzgerald thought she had recovered but, years later, she was shaken by nightmares and flashbacks. Only after years of counseling and hard, personal work did she feel herself steady again, she said.

Then, in February, the same fear came rushing back. She had walked into her bedroom when she was startled by the sound of someone whistling outside her home. She realized a burglar was somewhere inside her darkened house. The whistle apparently was a signal to the burglar from someone standing watch outside, she said.

“It made every hair on my body stand up. It put me right back where I was 15 years ago,” Fitzgerald said.

She dialed 911 from a cordless telephone in her bedroom and, gripping it tightly, walked through her house and outside after being so instructed. When deputies arrived, they combed the house, but came up empty-handed.

“They even checked inside the (clothes) dryer,” she said. “They made me feel like it was OK to stay home alone.”

Understandably, Fitzgerald wants the level of law enforcement to remain as it was before January, with a full-service sheriff’s station in her town. San Dimas benefits from affiliation with the large Sheriff’s Department, a system that has resources and expertise often not available to smaller, city police departments, Fitzgerald said.

The city also benefits from the street traffic of deputies and Sheriff’s Department employees going to and from the station, an indirect benefit that might not occur if La Verne took over patrols, she said.

“Bedroom communities like this don’t know what it will be like if the sheriff’s deputies are pulled out,” she said. “It will be awful.”