Costs Versus Safety : Oxnard to Consider Police Plan to Cut Back Crossing Guards

Oxnard police officials want to eliminate five part-time school crossing guards and two mid-level managers so that they can promote two top administrators and hire a street cop to counsel junior high students about drugs and gangs.

The proposal, scheduled to be discussed today by the City Council, would also do away with four more crossing guards by July, 1995--a plan that some school officials and parents claim would threaten student safety.

Nineteen part-time crossing guards would be left to shuttle students safely across the streets of the county’s most populous city if the council approves the plan.

In addition to the staff changes, the Police Department restructuring would save almost $10,000 through June, and another $73,000 in fiscal year 1994-95. Subsequent annual savings would reach $94,000, according to Chief Harold L. Hurtt.

“What we did was review the areas where we’re using crossing guards and see if they’re really needed there,” Hurtt said. “In some areas, there was really very little traffic connected to the schools.”

Officials say the revisions would allow the department to better allocate its scarce resources. Investigations supervisor Tom Cady would be promoted from commander to assistant police chief--duties Cady already performs, Hurtt said.

But school officials--both public and private--said they were concerned that fewer crossing guards could endanger young students walking to school.

“We feel pedestrian safety is a function of the city, whether they are children or adults,” said Sandra Herrera, an assistant superintendent with the Oxnard Elementary School District.

“Our overall focus is educating children once they get onto our campus,” said Herrera, one of several school officials to complain about a similar plan rejected by the council last year.

Sister Marian Clare, principal at St. Anthony’s School in south Oxnard, said she believed that the recommendation to eliminate nine crossing guards was made before she was even consulted.

“They just said there’s no money, we’ve got to do it someplace and it looks like yours is the corner that’s got to go,” said Clare, who described the intersection of Laurel and C streets as a main crossing for her 335 students.

“We have a major shopping center, a public park and two elementary schools” near St. Anthony’s, Clare said. “It’s incredible.”

In December, Hurtt proposed that the Police Department get out of the crossing guard business and transfer that responsibility to the schools. But more than a dozen speakers persuaded the City Council to not approve the plan, saying schools could not afford it.

Unlike the December proposal, Hurtt’s new plan has not been billed as a public hearing. Instead, it will be considered as one of a number of items on the so-called “consent agenda,” which typically consists of non-controversial matters.

“It’s dangerous to cut the crossing guards because they’re so crucial,” said Danielle McFarland of Oxnard, who expressed the same concern at the December public hearing.

“With the way people around here drive, it’s choosing (between) the kids’ lives or the crossing guards,” she said Monday. “I think the kids’ lives are more important.”

Cady said the youth services officer is needed to combat rising incidents of gang affiliation and drug use among adolescents.

“They’re right at that critical age where you really need to be doing things to keep them out of getting on that track,” he said. “A good positive police influence is a good way to do that.”

Cady said the youth services officer would be responsible for developing a series of educational and outreach programs to provide teen-agers with alternatives to gangs and drugs.

“We need to begin offering these services at the junior high school level before they get to high school,” he said.

With an annual budget of more than $19 million, the Oxnard Police Department employs about 245 people--roughly 1.65 people per 1,000 residents.

But the number of sworn officers--about 1 per 1,000 residents--is fewer than any other police force in the county except Port Hueneme.