Police Chief Builds Bridges to Community

A computer in every squad car and Neighborhood Watch on every street--those are Police Chief Harold Hurtt’s goals for the future.

But wrestling with the present takes up plenty of his time too.

The department was hit last week with a $15-million lawsuit filed on behalf of the widow of slain SWAT team Officer James Rex Jensen Jr., who was accidentally shot and killed by a fellow officer in a botched drug raid last March.

And in a police brutality case against Officer Robert Flinn, the department got another black eye in recent days, when the prosecutor accused Oxnard officers of a “code of silence” and of covering up the incidents. Flinn is accused of hitting and kneeing one man he arrested last year and bloodying the nose of another man in December 1995.

Also expected within the next month is a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by a group of two families whose loved ones died last year either in department custody or while being arrested by Oxnard police officers. One of the men, Luther Thomas Allen, died in the department’s holding cell after being arrested for drunk driving and hitting a car. The other man, Raul Madera, died while six Oxnard officers were restraining him during an arrest.

The family of another man, Larry Pankey, who was shot and killed by a SWAT team sharpshooter in January, also said it will be suing the department. Pankey was shot after a four-hour standoff with police that was prompted by a domestic disturbance.

Although Hurtt would like to point out the steady five-year, 30% decline in crime in the city and a huge jump in citizen participation in community policing programs, he is nagged by those headlines.

And Hurtt’s biggest concern is how those headlines are perceived by the community.

“Building bridges and building trust has been important since I first took this job,” he said. “And I think we have a tremendous amount of support from the community.”

Last summer the department sponsored a study that showed overwhelming community approval for the Police Department’s performance.

Hurtt said the recent controversies must be put into perspective.

“When anyone is hurt or dies in a situation with police it is tragic,” he said. “It’s something I take personally, because the safety of all our citizens is my job. . . . But you have to understand we are called in when all else fails. We are there at the worst possible time, at critical and dangerous times, and sometimes we’re forced to take certain action.”

Hurtt, 50, said he has tried to foster an environment of openness within the department. He said if officers have made any mistakes they are willing to admit it.

Hurtt left the 2,050-officer Phoenix police force as an assistant chief, after working in that department for 24 years, to take the Oxnard job in July 1992.

He and his wife, Carol, who works with the county’s probation department, have been married for nine years, and he has four grown children from a previous marriage.

Mayor Manuel Lopez said that since Hurtt took the city’s top police post, he has done a tremendous job of reaching out to the community.

Hurtt has increased the number of Neighborhood Watch programs from three when he started to more than 30. And Hurtt has been instrumental in increasing the number of police storefronts, Lopez said.

“I think his emphasis on community-based policing has been really pioneering in the county,” Lopez said.

Through the use of state and federal grants, Hurtt also has increased the number of sworn officers to 179, the highest level in department history, he said.

“Of course this is all very expensive, and we’re going to have to figure out what to do when the grants run out, but he’s had a tremendous impact,” Lopez said, adding that the police services budget, which now stands at about $22 million, has swelled from 38% of the city’s budget to more than 50%.

Hurtt’s public relations work--going to churches, Neighborhood Watch meetings, City Council meetings and appearing on the department’s weekly cable access TV show “Streetbeat”--has been invaluable.

“Crime is down, but we still have people who believe that they live in a jungle,” Lopez said. “Perceptions--people’s feeling about their safety--is so very important. I think Chief Hurtt has done a tremendous job of assuring residents with his outreach into the community.”

But Lopez said that to win and keep public trust the Police Department must be answerable to the public.

“A police review board is something that has been talked about off and on since the 1960s, when I first became involved in city politics,” Lopez said. “When anything surfaces like, say, this latest round of lawsuits, it kind of brings those discussions back up.”

Although Lopez said he did not support a recommendation to establish a citizen police review board, he said the council needs to be kept better apprised of allegations about the department and its officers.

In the late 1970s, the Oxnard City Council acted as something of a police review board, but that role ended badly after the police union offered a vote of no confidence in the mayor, Lopez said.

“I think times have changed,” he said. “I don’t think people see the Police Department as the enemy or as separate from them.”

Former Police Chief Robert Owens said the old review system did not work and that it set up an antagonistic relationship between the department’s rank and file and the City Council.

“One of my big frustrations at the time was that the council was not defending us,” Owens said. “The [Oxnard Police Officers Assn.] was a big ally of mine and they ended up giving the mayor a vote of no confidence. But they turned things around with the council, who ended up supporting the police better than they had before.”

Hurtt said that people today know exactly what is involved in police work. There is no mystery to the job anymore, he said.

Residents have a better understanding of officers and the work they do, Hurtt said, because of such things as the Citizen Academy, where civilians learn about police work and even ride along with patrol officers.

“We’re not some occupying army,” Hurtt said. “I mean, we are the community.”

The economic vitality of Oxnard may seem to be an issue far afield from police work, but Hurtt said his department realizes that its own survival depends on the health of local businesses.

Last year Oxnard voters rejected Measure Z--a utility tax for increasing funding for the police and fire departments.

“We got a pretty clear message from the voters in November that we have to do more with what we have,” he said. “I just hope they realize we’ve been doing that for several years now . . . and that they are getting a great deal out of their tax dollars.”

In the next five to 10 years, Hurtt said, he wants to bring Oxnard into the computer age.

“We’re about 30 years behind the times as far as computers and our radio dispatch system,” Hurtt said.

Because of an archaic computer system that tracks crime reports, Hurtt said, it takes up to three months for the department to put together crime stats at the end of the year.

Hurtt said police departments in Arizona were using “mobile digital terminals” as far back as 1975.

“We only just now started doing that,” he said.

The laptop-like computers can be used by patrol officers to make crime reports, and some systems can also be used to get immediate access to criminal records and warrants on suspects, increasing officers’ efficiency and giving them an added advantage in the field.

“We can’t just keep increasing the number of officers,” Hurtt said. “I think we have to look at computerization and increasing efficiency to better use the resources that we have.”

It could cost from $1.3 million to $1.5 million to set up the computer dispatch and records management system envisioned by Hurtt.

Although they disagree with Hurtt on certain points of management, representatives from the Oxnard Police Officers Assn. said rank-and-file officers generally give the chief high marks.

Sgt. Bill Lewis, the union president, and Senior Officer Tom Chronister, who is on the union’s governing board, agreed for the most part with Hurtt’s approach to crime fighting and spending priorities.

“We’re just crippled by the [computer] system we have now,” said Chronister.

The department’s computer is cumbersome, making tracking of crimes difficult and using the data more trouble than it is worth sometimes, Chronister said.

The union also sees eye-to-eye with the chief’s emphasis on community-based policing and his interest in the economic vitality of local businesses.

“Police work is different today than what it used to be,” Chronister said. “If you don’t know about the old ‘grin-and-grip’ of community-based policing, you’re not going to prosper here.”

Some of the criticism Hurtt gets from the rank and file is that the officers rarely get to see him--which is noticeable because the previous chief, Owens, was known for his closeness with the troops.

“We hear that some guys miss that,” Lewis said.

“I also understand that the chief would like to do more, but he’s busy trying to establish himself in the community,” Lewis said. “It’s hard to do both.”

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About This Series

This is one in an occasional series on Ventura County’s five city police chiefs. “The Chiefs: Profiles of Ventura County’s Top Cops” is a look at the common concerns of the county’s local law enforcement leaders, as well as the issues that make the departments and their chiefs unique.