Residents’ Safety Concerns Answered

Oak Park may be one of the safest communities around, but that doesn’t mean that its 12,000 residents are pleased with the level of police services they receive.

About 100 residents of the unincorporated community gathered Wednesday night to listen to Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo and representatives from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol during a town hall meeting on public safety.

At the start of the meeting, Schillo eased the main concerns of many of those present by hoisting a 35 mph road sign and pronouncing “This is the sign you’re going to see on Lindero Canyon [Road].”

Many Oak Park residents have complained about dangerous, speeding traffic along the windy canyon road. CHP officials said they plan to increase patrols in the area to let people know they are serious about enforcing the speed limit.

Representatives of the Sheriff’s Department’s East County Police Services Division also discussed the crowd’s other main complaint: the time Oak Park residents must wait for a deputy to arrive after they call police.

In 1994, for 95% of all calls, Oak Park residents waited 30 to 36 minutes for a deputy, according to the Sheriff’s Department. The number of calls from residents requesting a deputy increased by 20% from 1993 to 1994, though only 4.4% were considered emergencies.

Chief Deputy Bob Brooks explained that because Oak Park is so far from some of the other areas that deputies patrol, it often takes them a long time to arrive. But he said that in true emergencies, deputies arrive much faster, usually in about 10 to 15 minutes.

Brooks also told the residents that Oak Park’s 1994 rate of serious crimes per 1,000 residents was an incredibly low 10.85--almost half the rate of Thousand Oaks, which is considered one of the safest cities in the nation for its size.