A Sign of a Widening Gap

Why, in one of the nation’s safest counties, does the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department send its deputies out in pairs when most police agencies--even in high-crime urban areas--assign only one officer per car?

At a time when the Sheriff’s Department enjoys substantial annual budget increases despite cutbacks to other county operations, it’s a fair question to ask.

The Sheriff’s Department began double-staffing its patrol cars on 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts in 1995, shortly after it began receiving annual cash windfalls from Proposition 172, the public safety tax initiative approved by voters in 1993.

Critics say the double-staffing policy proves that the department has more money than it needs and underscores the need for changing the way Proposition 172 dollars are distributed.

At the request of the Board of Supervisors, Sheriff Bob Brooks is reviewing the controversial policy, which costs $3.4 million per year. He and other sheriff’s officials defend the double-staffing, calling it critical to public and officer safety.

There’s no question that police work is dangerous and fraught with unpleasant surprises, even in a relatively safe county such as this. Yet Ventura County deputies are well-trained, well-equipped and in constant communication with their dispatchers and each other. Is it prudent to maintain this extra layer of security while dollars are too scarce to cover other county programs that are crucial to public safety--including mental health care?

A Times study of patrol practices throughout the country shows that only 11% of police agencies nationwide double-staff their patrol cars. And most of those are large metropolitan departments, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where murder cases routinely reach more than 400 annually. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department handled 11 homicides in 1999.

Representatives from several agencies operating with one-officer patrol cars say the extra staffing is unnecessary, citing studies that show an extra officer in a car had no impact on response times or reducing crime rates.

“In fact, studies seem to indicate there are fewer injuries to officers and fewer complaints against one-person units,” Donald Zettlemoyer, a former Detroit detective who now directs the Justice and Safety Institute for Pennsylvania State University, told The Times.

Every other law enforcement agency in Ventura County, from Simi Valley, ranked the safest city in the nation by the FBI, to Oxnard, home of the county’s largest gang, uses one-officer patrol units.

The Sheriff’s Department can afford this extra staffing at a time when other county agencies are making cuts because of the way Proposition 172 dollars are distributed. County Ordinance 4088 guarantees that 100% of the local proceeds from Proposition 172 go to four agencies engaged in law enforcement: the Sheriff’s Department, district attorney’s office, public defender’s office and Probation Department. The Sheriff’s Department gets two-thirds of the more than $40 million generated annually from this source.

When the Board of Supervisors returns from its summer hiatus, it should ask Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford to sit down with Sheriff Brooks, Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury and others to negotiate an improved version of Ordinance 4088. This law has created a widening budget gap between these well-funded law enforcement agencies and all other county departments--a gap that is inappropriate in such a low-crime area and doomed to grow ever wider until this ordinance is revised.

We respect Sheriff Brooks’ right to spend his department’s budget as he sees fit. Yet we believe this example does indeed illustrate that the Sheriff’s Department has money for extras while cuts are being made to other county programs that also support the public’s safety.