City Honors Veteran Cop as Top Employee

Showering him with accolades and a dozen long-stemmed red roses, Mayor Jack Tingstrom presented veteran Ventura Police Officer Jim Cubitt with a $100 check and a plaque honoring him as the city’s Employee of the Year on Monday night.

Tingstrom called Cubitt the “granddaddy of community-problem-oriented policing,” and praised him for setting up police storefronts around Ventura.

This year there were 18 nominations for employee of the year.

A committee made up of the previous year’s Employee of the Year, Supervisor of the Year and a staff member selected by the city manager makes the final selection.

Cubitt, a Ventura police officer for 23 years, has been a major force in setting up the department’s mini-offices throughout the city, which are designed to establish a police presence in different neighborhoods and build a sense of trust among residents. Cubitt helped set up Ventura’s first police storefront in Montalvo in 1994 and the Westside Storefront at 110 N. Olive St. shortly afterward. There are now four storefronts.

Sharon Troll, the volunteer coordinator for the Westside Storefront, described Cubitt as a passionate man who is “just like a bulldog” when he believes in something. Community policing and the avenue are two things he really cares about, she said.

“He would be the one who would get out and rattle doors if he could--just like in the good old days,” Troll said. “He doesn’t do that, but he’s gotten the police out on the streets on bikes.”

Cubitt, whose arm was in a cast Tuesday because he was injured while helping to apprehend a suspect, had trouble holding his gifts. Tingstrom held the microphone for Cubitt’s acceptance speech and jokingly tried to balance the roses across the officer’s free elbow.

“I’m only one member of an all-star team,” said Cubitt, who received a standing ovation. “There are hundreds of men and women out on the street who have made our dreams become realities out in the storefronts.”