Santa Ana Police to Close 5 of 7 Substations This Year

By GEOFF BOUCHER

March 16, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA —

Police will shut down five of this city’s seven community substations in upcoming months, a marked change in department direction that the police chief says is driven by budget constraints and the promise of a sprawling new Civic Center headquarters.

Department officials say the planned November opening of a new $100-million police complex will make the substations obsolete. But news of the closures was greeted with trepidation by some community and business leaders. Many who have bought into the department’s vision of community policing see the neighborhood outposts as visible symbols of a police commitment to a crime-weary city.

“They’re leaving? There’s no way they’re staying? I didn’t know that,” said Carmela Downing, a regional administrator for Decision Data computer sales and a storefront neighbor of one of the two Southcoast substations. “That’s really too bad. When we moved in here from Huntington Beach, it was such a pleasure having them there. They’re a positive for us.”

A merchant near the Northeast substation had a more succinct appraisal of the closings: “It was too good to last,” the store manager said, declining to give her name. “When they go, the gang members will come back.”

Those sentiments were echoed by other substation neighbors, some of whom were so excited initially to have police for neighbors that they donated fax machines and other office equipment and co-sponsored community projects, such as immunization drives, with area officers.

But police officials, while giving a nod to the past value of the substations, said the neighborhood outposts will not be greatly missed.

“A street cop’s desk has four wheels,” said Lt. Mike Foote, who oversees the two Southcoast stations slated for closure. “There has been some apprehension among people in the community, but that’s a concern about the unknown. We explain to them that we’re still going to be out there, it’s just our office that’s moving.”

Police Chief Paul M. Walters said the redeployment will allow the city to “bring top technology and resources” to bear on community policing efforts by putting officers in a state-of-the-art facility.

Community policing is an increasingly popular strategy that focuses on neighborhood problem-solving and building partnerships with community members to devise long-term solutions to crime problems.

The two substations serving the city’s southwest district will close by April 1, while the outposts operating in the northeast and west areas will be shuttered as the November opening of the new main headquarters draws nearer, Capt. Bruce Carlson said.

The substations to be closed vary in size and service, but each acts as a way station for officers--providing them with office equipment, lockers, holding cells and meeting rooms--and most give the community a user-friendly location where they can tap into assorted police services. But Carlson said the combined costs of the sites--including $233,000 annually in rent and utilities--make them impractical.

Lifelong Santa Ana resident John Raya wonders whether the cost of closing the substations is even higher. Raya, a former member of a civilian police board and onetime mayoral candidate, said the recent decline in Santa Ana crime rates might be driven in part by the commitment to community policing and the high visibility of the substations.

“The police are proud of the crime reduction, and rightfully so, but now they may be stepping away from one of the things that really worked and helped,” Raya said. “If they weren’t effective, why did they make such a commitment to them for years? Were they out of line then? I don’t think so.”

Some others in the community were certain that change would have little or no impact.

“Many times there’s no one at the substations anyway, they’re all out on patrol,” said Ed McKie, president of the French Park Neighborhood Assn. “Just because there’s no station, that doesn’t mean there’s no police in the area.”

Two substations will remain open, Carlson said. One of those sites, the downtown station on 4th Street, is shared with other city agencies and a downtown merchant group that pay for site costs. The other, operated out of a small apartment in the Minnie Street neighborhood, is supported through state grants. Both will stay open as long as those alternate funding sources remain, Carlson said.

Chief Walters said the new headquarters and jail, “a premier police facility,” has been designed as a community hub and an easy-to-use center for residents looking for help.

The city’s four district patrols, now spread out among the substations, will each be housed in a separate section of the administration building’s ground floor, so the “customized” law enforcement for each area will be maintained.

But will a centralized headquarters serve the public as well as satellite substations? Santa Ana police say yes, because the densely populated city is relatively small at 27.2 square miles, meaning a pedestrian could get from one end of town to another during “a good lunchtime walk,” according to Foote. “The city is really five miles by five miles.”

The value of substations goes beyond simply improving police response time to calls, said former Lansing (Mich.) Police Capt. Jim Rapp. A cop for 26 years, Rapp is now a training coordinator at the National Center for Community Policing at Michigan State University. He said substations are frequently discussed during his lectures to different agencies looking to create community policing programs.

“We talk about them almost continuously,” Rapp said. “Substations are a basic premise of community policing. They can break down a lot of the governmental barriers and give people an easy entry point to getting help.”

Police agencies that have a decentralized rank and file often have greater success with the outreach programs that are part of the community policing philosophy, Rapp said.

“It helps, too, with building the partnerships, making coalitions, doing crime prevention . . . the things that make up community policing,” Rapp said. “The substations also make the public feel a sense of permanence about their police service: ‘The police have and office in this community, they’re not going to run out on us.’ ”

The largest Santa Ana substation tabbed for closure is the West-end outpost at Harbor Boulevard and West McFadden Avenue. Created in the mid-’70s as the department’s first community policing experiment, the substation is a free-standing operation, with its own roll-call room, fleet of cars, detention rooms and a contingent of on-site investigators.

The Westend station has also become a welcome neighbor to residents and shopkeepers in the area. The Lucky supermarket across the parking lot has co-sponsored six Christmas festivals with the substation, handing out gifts to thousands of children. Officers have gone “above and beyond” to make the area safe, Lucky manager Al Lopez said.

Standing in front of his store Friday, Lopez said he didn’t know the substation would be gone in a matter of months. “I had not heard that,” he said. “I thought they planned to be here two more years.”

The substation has been a source of pride and a valuable meeting place for local civic groups, Lopez said, and officers were the ones who came up with the idea of the supermarket organizing an immunization drive for local children.

As a patrol car cruised through the parking lot, Lopez said he was unsure about the future of the Christmas celebration and other activities. “Who knows what’s going to happen?”

Another storefront substation targeted for closure is in the city’s northeast section, at a strip mall at 1234 E. 17th St. The site is the workplace for 30 officers and employees, including the COPS task force. The task force is a community policing effort that puts emphasis on promoting partnerships with citizens and merchants, tailoring law enforcement to neighborhood needs and making officers very visible.

Last year, 935 residents visited the Northeast field office to file reports, register bicycles and meet with officers. Lt. Dave Nick, who oversees the COPS task force, said he hopes those visits will just be transferred to the new headquarters on the west end of the Orange County Civic Center area.

Nick said the department will likely step up the use of its mobile station, a 40-foot van that can set up temporary operations on any street corner or parking lot.

“We’ll go to them that way,” Nick said. “We know that this is all a departure from tradition, so we expect there will be some concerns, but I’m convinced we’ll be just as effective, if not more effective. We have done a lot of work with community partners and that will still be the case.”

One of the partners has been St. Joseph’s Church, a landmark and community hub in the historic neighborhoods in the city’s northeast corner. Parish officials, like area residents, were enthused to see huge reductions in crime after the arrival of COPS program. Parish manager Anne Roth said she hopes the substation closure doesn’t signal a change in the police commitment to the neighborhoods.

“We just don’t know how it’s going to affect us,” Roth said. “The program is so successful, I just hope that stays that way. Whether they are working out of the big building west of us or the little building east of us, I don’t think that’s as important as their attitude about helping people here. We don’t want that to change.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Decreasing Presence

Most of Santa Ana’s neighborhood police stations will close in the upcoming months. Just two will remain open.

Remaining Open

1. Downtown

116-A W. 4th St., #5

(714) 647-5066

2. Minnie Street

1010 Minnie St., Apt. 5

(714) 667-5194

Closing April 1

3. Southcoast