A Different Take on Community Policing : City Prosecutor’s Office Is One Part of Effort to Keep Anaheim a Tourist Attraction

For a city as dependent on tourism as Anaheim, it makes sense to prosecute even relatively minor crimes against tourists as strongly as the law allows. The city’s own prosecutor’s squad allows just that.

The hotels and motels, the restaurants and tourist attractions whose livelihood depends on a steady stream of visitors welcome the effort, which costs the city several hundred thousand dollars a year. Some hotels have offered free lodging to crime victims who have to come back to Anaheim to testify in a trial. An airline once flew three tourists back from Alaska to testify about a theft at Disneyland. Once the defendants found out the victims would return to testify, they pleaded guilty.

That kind of effort by businesses is a good idea, a sort of community policing by the tourism industry. Everyone in a city has a stake in fighting crime; businesses that can help in the effort are smart to do it.

The prosecutor’s office has seven full-time lawyers and two clerical workers. It began 40 years ago; for the last 20 years it has prosecuted misdemeanors almost exclusively, leaving felony cases to the county district attorney’s office. Anaheim is the only city in the county with its own prosecutor’s office, and is one of only 15 such cities in the state.

City officials explain that without the office, misdemeanor charges like ticket scalping at Anaheim Stadium or swiping a suitcase from a hotel near Disneyland might not rank high on the county district attorney’s list of priorities. The city attorneys handle crimes that do not involve tourists as well. One lawyer correctly said enforcing the law against even relatively minor crimes improves the community’s quality of life.

The city counts the prosecution division as crucial to maintaining a positive image for Anaheim, so the tourist dollars keep coming. The black eye Miami suffered several years ago due to a series of attacks on foreign tourists is easily remembered.