LA PALMA : Police Paperwork Will Still Go to Buena Park

Saying it saves both time and money, the City Council is continuing a cooperative arrangement with Buena Park for the handling of police paperwork involving court cases.

Since 1986, La Palma police have contracted with their counterparts in Buena Park for “court liaison services.” Those services involve scheduling the court appearances of police officers who make arrests and must testify at trials. Buena Park police also monitor the court dockets for cases involving La Palma.

“This has saved us a great deal of money,” La Palma Police Chief David Barr said. “They track our court hours and they keep in touch with us about whether our officers are needed in court. If a case is canceled, we are notified so that we can cancel one of our officer’s appearances in court.

“In the past, we had to do our own tracking of court cases, and it ended up with the police desk taking a lot of time just for this. If we didn’t have this arrangement with Buena Park, we’d either have to hire another officer or go back to devoting too much police time to this paperwork.”

The La Palma City Council this week unanimously approved a two-year extension of the contract with Buena Park. The contract calls for La Palma to pay $4,200 a year for the service, which officials estimated is half what it would cost the city to do its own work.

Barr said Buena Park was picked as La Palma’s partner in the court liaison because both use the courts in the North Orange County Judicial District in Fullerton.