SANTA PAULA : Fed-Up Neighbors Form Citizens Patrol

Fed up with crime encroaching on their homes, six Santa Paula neighbors have formed a citizens patrol to work in concert with the Police Department.

“I don’t believe you can complain about a problem and then not do anything,” said Huguette Johnson, who with her husband, David, started the patrol. “We supposedly lived in the best part of town, but the amount of graffiti and burglaries here shocked me.”

Johnson said she and her husband were pushed into action after confronting two young men who were trying to break into their house. They went to the police and the City Council asking for a bigger police presence in their neighborhood.

“When we saw the debate over the budget, we knew there wasn’t money for more patrols,” Johnson said, “so we decided to form our own.”

The group modeled its program after similar patrols throughout Ventura County. These citizen patrols take the idea of a Neighborhood Watch one step further, actually becoming incorporated into the Police Department and taking orders from a watch commander.

The volunteers in Santa Paula will receive police training, radios and cellular phones. The city and Police Department in turn will assume a certain amount of liability if a volunteer is injured on the job.

Santa Paula Police Chief Walt Adair said proper training and limiting the duties of the volunteers will reduce the city’s potential liability.

The group will avoid both physical and verbal contact with suspects and primarily report any strange activity on their watch. That alone, Adair said, would help his department fight crime.

“This is an effort by a group of people who recognized the limits of the department to handle all the demands placed on it,” Adair said Monday at a City Council meeting, before the council voted unanimously to approve formation of the group. “This shows that volunteerism is not part of the past.”