City Awarded Grant to Hire 5 Deputies

The city was awarded a $375,000 federal grant Monday to hire five more sheriff’s deputies.

The addition of two motorcycle deputies, two bicycle deputies and a detective will bring the city’s total number of sworn peace officers to 104, said Sheriff’s Department Capt. Jeff Matson.

The city contracts for its law enforcement service with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. The local station is called the Thousand Oaks Police Department, but the officers are sheriff’s deputies.

The money comes from a federal Department of Justice program started in 1994 when President Clinton vowed to put 100,000 more officers on city streets in five years.

“It allows us to really bring community-oriented policing to Thousand Oaks,” Matson said of the grant. “You need more officers on the street to do that, and I believe that was the goal of the program.”

The additional deputies are necessary because Thousand Oaks has less than one officer per 1,000 residents, one of the county’s lowest ratios, he said.

The grant money will cover less than half the cost of hiring the deputies, Matson said. The remainder of the salaries will be paid by the city.

Monday’s announcement marks the fifth federal grant Thousand Oaks has received to hire deputies since 1994. More than $800,000 in grant money has been used to hire 16 new officers, Matson said.