Deputies, Residents Join to Discuss Strategy for Community Policing

Albert Miramontes once joined a game of children’s kickball as he walked his daily beat in Moorpark, and the memory has stayed with him to this day.

“I only did it for two or three minutes, but the kids really liked it,” the senior deputy with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said. “They saw that I cared.”

On Thursday, deputies and Sheriff’s Department administrators from the East County Services Division gathered with the public at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley to brainstorm a community policing plan for the coming year, and Miramontes’ story was but one example of law enforcement’s vision for the future.

The forums began four years ago when Thousand Oaks and its surrounding communities were battling a growing gang problem, said Division Chief Bob Brooks. With that problem on the mend, this year’s strategic planning session was geared more toward envisioning what lays ahead, he said.

“We want to dream a little bit,” Brooks told the audience of about 100 people. “This is about the health of the community, and interacting [with the public] to make this a better place to raise a family.

“We can’t do it alone,” said Brooks, who is running for sheriff this year, seeking to replace retiring Sheriff Larry Carpenter. “We’re just part of the puzzle.”

Several of the speakers said youth crimes--and preventing adolescents from entering a life of crime--would be the focus of law enforcement at the end of this decade. Also, Miramontes said, deputies and police officers must become community role models if departments hope to have a significant effect on the growing number of teenagers who are joining street gangs.

“We need to get out there,” Miramontes said. “We have to start looking at what kids and which neighborhoods need help.”

Critics could consider a game of kickball too cute in the serious world of policing, but that’s hardly the case, said David Stirling, California’s chief deputy attorney general, who delivered the forum’s keynote speech.

“Community-based policing and problem-solving is not a touchy-feely term,” said Stirling, who is running for attorney general and is on a campaign trip to Ventura County. “It’s about being hands-on; officers working and interacting with the people they serve, day-in and day-out.”

After Brooks and Stirling spoke, groups gathered at workshop tables to make lists of potential trends facing the area, which included population increases and adolescent crime. Using these trends as a framework, groups developed dozens of proposals the department hopes to implement in the coming year.

Proposals included putting kids in front of the camera on local cable-access stations to promote a drug- and crime-free lifestyle; inserting surveys inside water bills to gauge community attitudes toward the Sheriff’s Department and to find out what areas of crime concern residents the most; and subsidizing payrolls so officers can live in the communities where they work.

“We have to identify the needs of the community and then tailor-make our program to meet those needs,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Arve Wells. “That’s why it’s so important to have this type of community involvement. It can produce a much better product.”

The east county is one of the safest areas, per capita, in the country, according to annual crime-rate surveys, but room for improvement always exists, said Deputy Dirk Munsi, who patrols the Oak Park area.

“Brainstorming like this can provide us with a positive advantage.” Munsi said. “In past [forums], we’ve taken an overview of our situation, but this year we’re actually able to project what we and the community think needs to be done.”