Officers Make Cleanup Sweep of Neighborhood

Nancy Pedersen was worried about her neighborhood.

She started noticing the decay slowly creeping along the streets around her home in the Cal-Gisler section of south Oxnard.

First it was a neighbor who kept his car parked on the lawn. Then graffiti started to appear on fences and walls where it hadn’t been before.

She noticed cars abandoned on streets, pit bulls roaming unleashed and roosters in one yard. Worried that this was a harbinger of something worse, Pedersen complained to the city more than a year ago.

On Wednesday, Pedersen finally got some satisfaction.

A team of police officers, along with the full force of the city’s code enforcement unit, swept through the working class neighborhood, towing away abandoned cars, cleaning up graffiti and issuing tickets for housing code violations.

Pedersen said the recent takeover of code enforcement duties by Oxnard’s Police Department has put new vigor into what had been a slow-moving bureaucracy.

“I was calling them regularly and nothing was getting done,” she said. “I mean they were taking care of one or two things, but not the whole neighborhood.”

When the Police Department took over code enforcement duties, Pedersen, chairwoman of the Cal-Gisler neighborhood council, met with Oxnard Police Cmdr. Charles Hookstra and drove him around the neighborhood. Hookstra agreed that the graffiti, trash, barnyard animals and general blight could also bring on crime.

“People feel as safe as their surroundings,” Hookstra said. “When they see trash and graffiti they assume the worst.”

While watching the cleanup operation swing into full gear, Pedersen praised the new effort.

“[Hookstra] is a man of his word,” she said.

The department is planning other neighborhood cleanups, Hookstra said.

“We’ll be going through every neighborhood in the city,” he said.

On Wednesday the team of five code enforcement officers, four police officers, members of a city youth employment program, the city’s tree trimming service and an animal control officer fanned out to 41 addresses throughout the neighborhood, which is bordered by Oxnard Boulevard, Channel Islands Boulevard and the railroad tracks.

Hookstra said the code enforcement officers issued fewer than 10 citations and only towed two cars, because most of the people were cooperative. “We had at least 85% compliance overall,” he said.

Signs of urban blight citywide have been on the rise for several years, officials say.

A report issued by the city’s Code Enforcement Division two years ago said the department had fallen behind in attacking the problem because of a lack of code enforcement officers.

The hope is that after Wednesday’s cleanup, a single code enforcement officer now will be able to keep neighborhood violations in check, said Ray Mattley, acting supervisor of the code enforcement unit.

At a motel on Oxnard Boulevard, code enforcement officer Robert Levin checked off a long list of violations to motel manager Pete Miller.

“You’ve got some exposed outdoor wiring,” Levin said.

Walking with Miller, Levin pointed out an outdoor light switch with live wires hanging out. “That’s an accident waiting to happen,” Levin said.

Miller, who has managed the Oxnard Lodge for the last four months, said the owner has been working to bring the building up to code.

“When he took it over it was in a lot worse shape,” he said.