Ventura’s Thomas Takes Pride in His Record on Fighting Gangs

After almost 10 years as police chief and three decades on the force, Richard Thomas says it is his record on fighting gang crime that gives him the most pride.

“We’re the only community in the county that can boast that they have solved every significant gang crime except for one . . . the death of Jesse Strobel,” said Thomas.

The case still haunts the chief and his investigators.

It is most frustrating because department officials think they know who stabbed Strobel to death Jan. 29, 1993, as he walked to his mother’s home from his father’s Seaward Avenue pizza parlor.

Thomas said detectives believe the 17-year-old Ventura High School football standout was killed by a local gang member, but no one will come forward to testify against the man.

In the past, by throwing department resources at gang problems, Thomas had usually been able to come up with quick arrests. It just didn’t work with the Strobel case, he said.

But the chief had better luck with a massive citywide crackdown on gangs eight years ago, after a brazen drive-by shooting of 14-year-old Anthony Ortega, a Ventura High School freshman.

The department’s gang unit, only 2 years old at the time, arrested nearly 100 suspected gang members and rousted about 100 others.

At the time, Thomas remarked: “My philosophy is get on it and get on it big, even if you overkill a bit.” And he added that his department had essentially put the city’s five gangs “out of business.”

City leaders said then that they liked the chief’s approach, and they maintain the same attitude today.

“He is providing the kind of leadership we want from our chief,” said Councilman Steve Bennett.

Thomas’ hard-nosed approach belies what motivated him to get into police work in the first place. He did not want to crack heads, but he always wanted to help people, he said.

“And you know, everyone I’ve hired or recruited over the years has said the same thing,” Thomas said.

The son of a Fresno cleaner and press shop owner, Thomas, 49, who studied history and English at Cal State Fresno, said he drifted into police work after a career counselor suggested it.

He joined the Ventura department in 1969.

“I came here because Ventura was the first department to offer me a job,” he said.

Thomas stayed because he loved the work and the community.

“It’s really an exciting and fascinating job,” he said. “I’m kind of an active person, so even when there were no calls, I’d find things to do. Plus, you get to see people with their real human side exposed.”

By most accounts, Thomas has been a good leader. He worked with top officers and the department rank and file to identify goals early on in his tenure, and then he chased after those goals.

Like most of the departments in the county, Ventura has pushed its community policing programs, setting up police storefronts in neighborhoods and encouraging citizen involvement.

Councilman Bennett said the push has given the department more eyes and ears and helped suppress crime.

The other key to fighting crime in the city, Bennett said, is that Ventura consistently spends more per resident for police services than other cities in the county.

“We do spend a lot for police services,” said Bennett. “But we also demand a lot of them. I want the Ventura Police Department to be the best.”

As with most other cities in the county, Ventura has had a steady decrease in crime for the last decade, officials said.

In 1994, Ventura, which for decades ranked below Oxnard and Santa Paula in its rate of crime, won the dubious distinction of having the highest crime rate in the county.

But since then the city’s crime rate has again fallen below that of Oxnard and Santa Paula--dropping by 12% in 1995, officials said.

Figures for 1996 have not yet been released, but Thomas said he does not expect any major surprises.

“We do not live and die by the year to year changes in our crime rate,” he said. “We look at long-term trends.”

The department’s budget has hovered around $15 million for the last couple of years, but that amount includes expenses incurred by the Fire Department for dispatch, computer, personnel and vehicle maintenance costs, officials said.

The Ventura City Council recently decided to spend about $400,000 for the purchase of portable computers for several of the Police Department’s patrol cars. It will take several hundred thousand dollars more to equip all the patrol cars with the computers, officials said.

Thomas said he hopes that one day all his patrol officers in the field will have mobile computers at their disposal to give them ready access to criminal records information.

Thomas, who was a part of the first wave of officers to join the Ventura Police Department required to have college degrees, said officers today will be part of another major modernization.

“Pretty soon everybody we hire will have to be computer literate,” Thomas said.

Sitting in his office decorated with western prints and police memorabilia, Thomas said he still sees himself as the patrolman who eagerly started in police work nearly 30 years ago, even though it’s been years since he was a line officer.

“Uniform patrol, that’s what we do,” he said. “We do a lot of stuff at the Police Department, but that’s what we’re about. All that other stuff really is meant to support the line level operation. I really believe that, and that’s the job that I enjoyed the most, and it’s the one I miss most when I sit here in the office going through paperwork.”

The 120 sworn Ventura police officers seem to appreciate Thomas’ point of view, according to Sgt. Ken Corney the acting president of the Ventura police union.

“He really backs that up,” said Corney. “Thomas is supportive of issues dealing with the rank and file. He gets us what we need to do our job day-to-day.”

Like most of his fellow police chiefs in the county, Thomas said he has an open-door policy allowing officers to drop by his office any time to sit down and talk, ask questions or register complaints.

“I think a lot of managers say that,” Corney said. “They say they have an ‘open-door policy,’ but when it comes down to it, you have a tough time getting an appointment. With him, you can really go in there any time and he listens. I think he really listens to what we have to say.”

Early last year, the chief gave his backing to a proposal supported by the union to put patrol officers on a three-day-a-week rotation with 12 1/2-hour shifts and an additional 10-hour shift each month.

The new schedule--which affects only the department’s 60 patrol officers--is meant to cut down on overtime and boost morale.

City officials are still awaiting some sort of accounting on the new schedule, said Councilman Gary Tuttle.

Tuttle said he wishes the new schedule, which was unanimously approved by the City Council at the time, had been made part of a larger salary negotiation. He said it is hard to say whether the schedule is working well or not.

“We have not--to my knowledge--ever had an update on it, so I don’t have a good handle on how it’s working,” Tuttle said. “We passed it without really knowing why we were doing it. We were told it was a good idea, and that’s why we voted for it.”

City officials are just now sitting down with the police union to try to hammer out a new contract for the next two years, said Corney.

Ten years ago, Ventura officers were among the best-paid in the state, Corney said. But now their pay is 6% below departments of comparable size, he said.

For example, officers in Ventura below the rank of lieutenant have a pay range that is much lower than other police departments in the county, said Corney.

A police officer at the lowest rank in Ventura receives a maximum salary of $44,000 a year, whereas his counterpart in Simi Valley or Oxnard could make up to $49,000, Corney said.

“That’s the top pay for people who’ve been on the force for five years if they have a bachelor’s degree, or 10 years if they don’t,” he said. “Would you stay on the department if you knew you could get paid that much more doing the same job next door?”

The total pay and benefits package offered to Ventura officers is about 11% less than that of Oxnard officers and about 12% less than in Simi Valley, he said.

“Getting a contract is really paramount to us,” Corney said. “Getting our officers paid at a competitive rate is important if they want to continue to find quality officers and keep them.”

About This Series

This is the last of five stories about the county’s city police chiefs. “The Chiefs: Profiles of Ventura County’s Top Cops” has looked at their common concerns as well as the issues that make the departments and their chiefs unique.