Ventura Jobs Office Reopens With Focus on Security

Armed guards patrolled the state unemployment office in Ventura as it reopened Monday, while the Oxnard office remained closed and its employees joined in a counseling session to cope with stress from the shooting rampage last week that left three of their colleagues dead.

Bobbie Espinoza, a supervisor who hid under her desk during the attack, emerged from the counseling session to say that she remembers talking with Alan Winterbourne, the gunman slain by police, two years ago.

During a 45-minute meeting, Espinoza said she offered him a number of job referrals and help from counselors. “He was different, but not violent. He wasn’t the type that would scream at us or bang the counter,” she said.

But she said Winterbourne found a reason to dismiss all of the job referrals she offered him. “I told him, ‘I’m trying to help you, trying to refer you to jobs and yet you turn them all down,’ ” she said. “He seemed very despondent.”

Meanwhile, the Employment Development Department’s Ventura office opened with armed guards and a new security system that allows only one client through the doors at a time. Winterbourne, 33, was shot and killed just outside the office at the end of a police chase that left one Oxnard detective dead.

By midmorning, the Ventura office was mobbed with clients. A line, 40 people long, had formed outside. The office staff said they were relieved to have the extra security.

“We needed the security for the employees so that they will feel supported and safe,” office manager Annette Havens said. “We just needed something more controlled in here.”

Red Christmas ribbons that had decked the pillars at the office in Ventura contrasted starkly Monday with the black ribbons employees wore in mourning for their colleagues. A large wreath of flowers stood in the lobby in memory of the three who died. Nearby was a vase of roses.

Lupe Ortiz, one of the workers who was taking applications for unemployment benefits at a table near the front door, said the guards and the new system helped ease fears of a repeat of Thursday’s shootings. But they did not help employees cope with the loss.

“You just try to deal with it, that’s all,” she said.

“We’re all pretty close,” said one employee who asked not to be identified. “We all go to training together so everyone knows everyone else,” she said. “We’re all just trying to go on.”

Employees from the Ventura office were counseled for the stress from the incident on Friday and were back to work on Monday.

“We’re going to continue on the best we can,” Havens said.

About 80 Oxnard employees, many of whom witnessed the killings, were sequestered for most of Monday in a counseling session.

Counselors said employees’ emotions ranged from fear for their own safety, anger at their employer for perceived lax security and guilt that they survived while three of their colleagues did not.

They have “a whole range of post-traumatic stress reactions,” said counselor Jeffrey Millstone. “They also have some very real concerns about operations. They are upset; they’re afraid to go back.”

State officials said armed guards would be posted at the Oxnard office at least through the end of the month. The office is scheduled to reopen Thursday.

At the unemployment office in Ventura, a state police officer stood watch outside while one armed private security guard and two unarmed guards surveyed activities inside. Guards will be kept at least through the end of this week, or as long as they are needed, a state official said.

Employment Development Department officials also met with Ventura and Oxnard employees on Monday to discuss increased security at the two offices. A committee of local employees and state officials will evaluate possible security measures, ranging from bulletproof glass to guards and raising the height of the public counter.

But any security measures will have to fit with the agency’s mission of working face-to-face with people and helping them find jobs, said Al Lee, the department’s chief deputy director.

“Whatever we put into these offices here, we have to say these are the things we’re going to do for all of the offices,” Lee said. “We have to be cognizant of what it means statewide.”

Meanwhile, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) announced Monday that he plans to push legislation to improve security at government offices throughout the state along with tougher penalties for those who commit crimes in government buildings.

“I am sickened by this rash of attacks on people who visit and work in government offices,” Torres said. “A visit to the DMV, unemployment office or post office should not be a life-threatening experience.”

A report issued in June by state police recommended beefed-up security at state offices, including more secure doors and bulletproof glass in high-risk offices. Had those measures been implemented, Torres said, the Oxnard deaths might have been avoided.

“The only thing between employees and the public was a locked gate, which (the gunman) kicked open,” Torres said.

Some Oxnard employees attending Monday’s counseling session also criticized the lack of security at the office.

“I just have a lot of anger,” said Art Medina, an employee in the Oxnard unemployment office. “I’ve been with the state for 27 years. Something has to be done.”

Medina said his office needs to have locked doors and bulletproof glass with armed guards stationed permanently. “I don’t want to go in that office without maximum security,” he said. “It’s that feeling that somebody was within 20 feet of my desk with the intent to kill.”

Espinoza, the supervisor in the Oxnard office, said she believes that no amount of security could have protected the office from such an attack. Furthermore, she said, putting up barriers between the public and office workers might increase the feeling of alienation among clients.

Espinoza said she plans to return to work if the Oxnard office opens as scheduled on Thursday. “I feel fine,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

But she acknowledges that she is jumpy at sudden noises and that some of her colleagues are irritable and cannot sleep. “Others don’t want to go back. Everybody has to deal with it in their own way.”

Gary Wood, an Oxnard employee who barricaded himself in an office during the rampage, said many people talked about survivor guilt during the counseling session. “They’re still trying to deal with why they survived,” he said.

Mark Sanders, a department administrator, said the manager of the Oxnard unemployment office had requested a security guard to be stationed in the office only a few days before the shooting.

That request had been approved by an area administrator but had not yet been received in Sacramento for final approval, Sanders said.

But a guard probably would have changed little, he said.

“Even though we would have approved a security guard, it would not have been an armed security person,” Sanders said. “With this gunman, he likely would have shot the security person.”

In Ventura, while harried workers rushed to keep up with waiting applicants on Monday, some clients wondered whether the wait, the holiday season, unemployment or other sources of stress would trigger a repeat of the tragedy.

“It’s the Christmas season and usually around the holidays, somebody is going to snap,” said Samuel Ponce, an unemployed Oxnard ironworker whose sister lives near the Oxnard unemployment office. “But when I heard the shots from my sister’s house last week, I thought it was just another drive-by shooting, just another day of life in Oxnard.”

Not all the clients waiting were bothered by the possibility of a recurrence of last Thursday’s violence.

“We’re not worried,” said Consuelo Salazar, an unemployed Oxnard field worker who was waiting in the office with her husband and 9-month-old daughter. “It’s calm here.”

But Laura Carlson, who was laid off from her job as a psychiatric social worker at Camarillo State Hospital two weeks ago, said she was very nervous to be in the unemployment office.

“People are upset and there are just too many pressures,” she said. “I see the impacts of this through my work but now I’m also going through it myself. I’ve helped hundreds of people like Mr. Winterbourne.”

Carlson, a single woman, said it is the first time she has been unemployed in 22 years.

“It’s terrifying,” she said. “Almost everywhere I go, I have to drive down Victoria Avenue past where (Detective James) O’Brien was shot,” she said. “I see that memorial there and it makes me cry.”

Times staff writer Jeannette Regalado and correspondent Julie Fields contributed to this article.

A Community Bids Farewell A procession today in honor of slain Oxnard police officer Jim O’Brien will begin at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 25 Las Posas Road in Camarillo and conclude at Santa Clara Cemetary, 2370 N. H St. in Oxnard immediately after the funeral. The 10 a.m. service is expected to draw thousands of people to the Camarillo church.

Oxnard Police Department officials also will conduct a motorcade of department vehicles from their downtown Oxnard police station to the church in Camarillo before the funeral service.

Street Closures for O’Brien Funeral

Officials will close a number of streets today in preparation for the funeral procession for slain Oxnard police Detective James E. O’Brien.

In Oxnard, where a motorcade of police and city officials will shuttle to St. Mary Magdalen Church in Camarillo, traffic officers will close the following downtown streets from 7 to 10 a.m.:

* 2nd Street between C and D streets;

* 3rd Street between C and E streets;

* D Street between 2nd and 4th streets.

Between 8:30 and 10 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers will halt traffic at various intersections along the route of the Oxnard motorcade.

After the motorcade passes, northbound traffic on Las Posas Road will be diverted east at Ponderosa Drive, where those attending the service will be directed north onto Carmen Drive and then southwest onto Las Posas Road.

Las Posas Road west of Carmen Drive will be used as a parking lot during the service.

After the service, CHP officers will block off intersections along Las Posas Road south to the Ventura Freeway (101). Officers already will have slowed northbound traffic along the freeway to allow the procession to proceed to the Santa Clara Cemetery in Oxnard.

Northbound traffic on the Ventura Freeway “will probably come to a stop, but officially it is not going to be closed,” California Highway Patrol Officer Brad Prows said.

Sometime before noon today officials will block the streets surrounding the Santa Clara Cemetery. Those roads include the length of Orchard Place and H Street between Vineyard Avenue and Rosebud Drive.