Deputies Move Into New Office in Moorpark

Bringing a full-time law enforcement presence to the city for the first time, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department on Monday opened a station downtown.

About a dozen members of the Sheriff’s Department who serve Moorpark--including Capt. Mike Lewis, two traffic officers and three investigators--have moved into the office at 26 Flory Ave.

The deputies and their staff, formerly posted in the Thousand Oaks sheriff’s headquarters at least 10 minutes away, were busy on Monday moving their office belongings and organizing their desks.

“We’re extremely excited about the prospect of being here, being more effective in the community and being more accessible,” Lewis said.

Officers say the new station should make their jobs easier.

Deputies said they will be able to get to most traffic accidents more quickly to study skid marks, examine the vehicles and interview witnesses.

“Not only will it improve our response time but, in essence, it puts our officers in the street for more hours,” Lewis said.

Some residents, especially those who don’t have cars, have also said it will be helpful and less intimidating to walk into the Moorpark office for obtaining reports or talking to detectives.

By midafternoon Monday, five residents visited the new Police Service Center. Some asked for directions, others wanted a police report, Lewis said.

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The office, a large room divided into cubicles and surrounded by nine smaller rooms, is not a full-fledged police station. It does not have a jail, dispatch center or lockers and shower facilities for patrol officers.

For now, patrol officers and special enforcement officers assigned to Moorpark will still report to the Thousand Oaks headquarters at the start and end of their work shift.

But because these officers can stop by at the office in Moorpark, it saves them the time of driving to Thousand Oaks to fill out a report.

Since the city incorporated in 1985, it has contracted with the Sheriff’s Department to provide police services--paying $3.1 million in the past fiscal year.

Five years from now, the City Council will consider whether the town needs a full-fledged police station, Mayor Pat Hunter said.

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Since 1994, the city has had a storefront “police resource center” at the Towne Center shopping center staffed entirely by volunteers. The volunteers’ duties were limited to providing information and taking fingerprints.

The city, which has more than tripled to 28,000 residents since incorporation, needed better police services, Hunter said.

“The new station says a lot about the growth of the city and the maturity of the city and the ability of our city to provide a fundamental service to the residents,” Hunter said.

The current station became possible after the Moorpark Unified School District agreed to lease the wing of their headquarters facing south on Los Angeles Avenue to the Sheriff’s Department.

The rent for the first year is free. But beginning next July 1, the city has agreed to pay the school district $1,400 a month. That monthly rent would increase $400 each year until the contract expires in 2002, city officials said.

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Once the contract ends, the city will consider whether it needs a 24-hour police station, Hunter said.

The deputies plan to hold a grand opening at the station on Oct. 3. For more information call 532-2700.